111 


07 


A  HISTORY  OF 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

SINCE  1870 


A  HISTORY  OF 

AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

SINCE  1870 


BY 

FRED  LEWIS  PATTEE 

Professor  of  the  English  Language  and  Literature  in  the  Pennsylvania 

State  College.     Author  of  "A  History  of  American  Literature," 

"The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  "The  Foundations  of 

English  Literature,"  etc. 


D.  APPLETON-CENTTJRY  COMPANY 

INCORPORATED 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED,  INCLUDING  THE 

RIGHT   TO    REPRODUCE    THIS    BOOK,    OR 

PORTIONS  THEREOF,  IN  ANY  FORM. 


'^ 


PRINTED    IN    U.S.A. 


TO  DARTMOUTH  COLLEGE 
AND  THE  DARTMOUTH  MEN 
OF  THE  EIGHTIES,  STU 
DENTS  AND  PROFESSORS, 
AMONG  WHOM  I  FIRST 
AWOKE  TO  THE  MEANING 
OF  LITERATURE  AND  OF 
LIFE,  THIS  BOOK  IS  IN 
SCRIBED  WITH  FULL  HEART. 


M78123 


PREFACE 

American  literature  in  the  larger  sense  of  the  term  began  with 
Irving,  and,  if  we  count  The  Sketch  Book  as  the  beginning,  the 
centennial  year  of  its  birth  is  yet  four  years  hence.  It  has  been 
a  custom,  especially  among  the  writers  of  text-books,  to  divide 
this  century  into  periods,  and  all  have  agreed  at  one  point :  in  the 
mid-thirties  undoubtedly  there  began  a  new  and  distinct  literary 
movement.  The  names  given  to  this  new  age,  which  corresponded 
in  a  general  way  with  the  Victorian  Era  in  England,  have  been 
various.  It  has  been  called  the  Age  of  Emerson,  the  Tran 
scendental  Period,  the  National  Period,  the  Central  Period. 
National  it  certainly  was  not,  but  among  the  other  names  there  is 
little  choice.  Just  as  with  the  Victorian  Era  in  England,  not 
much  has  been  said  as  to  when  the  period  ended.  There  has  been 
no  official  closing,  though  it  has  been  long  evident  that  all  the 
forces  that  brought  it  about  have  long  since  expended  themselves 
and  that  a  distinctively  new  period  has  not  only  begun  but  has 
already  quite  run  its  course. 

It  has  been  our  object  to  determine  this  new  period  and  to 
study  its  distinguishing  characteristics.  We  have  divided  the 
literary  history  of  the  century  into  three  periods,  denominating 
them  as  the  Knickerbocker  Period,  the  New  England  Period,  and 
the  National  Period,  and  we  have  made  the  last  to  begin  shortly 
after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  with  those  new  forces  and  new 
ideals  and  broadened  views  that  grew  out  of  that  mighty  struggle. 

The  field  is  a  new  one :  no  other  book  and  no  chapter  of  a  book 
has  ever  attempted  to  handle  it  as  a  unit.  It  is  an  important 
one:  it  is  our  first  really  national  period,  all-American,  au- 
tochthonic.  It  was  not  until  after  the  war  that  our  writers 
ceased  to  imitate  and  looked  to  their  own  land  for  material  and 
inspiration.  The  amount  of  its  literary  product  has  been  amaz 
ing.  There  have  been  single  years  in  which  have  been  turned 
out  more  volumes  than  were  produced  during  all  of  the  Knicker 
bocker  Period.  The  quality  of  this  output  has  been  uniformly 
high.  In  1902  a  writer  in  Harper's  Weekly  while  reviewing  a 


PREFACE 

book  by  Stockton  dared  even  to  say:  "He  belonged  to  that 
great  period  between  1870  and  1890  which  is  as  yet  the  greatest 
in  our  literary  history,  whatever  the  greatness  of  any  future  time 
may  be.'*  The  statement  is  strong,  but  it  is  true.  Despite 
Lowell 's  statement,  it  was  not  until  after  the  Civil  War  that 
America  achieved  in  any  degree  her  literary  independence.  One 
can  say  of  the  period  what  one  may  not  say  of  earlier  periods, 
that  the  great  mass  of  its  writings  could  have  been  produced  no 
where  else  but  in  the  United  States.  They  are  redolent  of  the 
new  spirit  of  America :  they  are  American  literature. 

In  our  study  of  this  new  national  period  we  have  considered 
only  those  authors  who  did  their  first  distinctive  work  before 
1892.  Of  tlust  large  group  of  writers  born  after  the  beginning 
of  tlu-  period  and  borne  into  their  work  by  forces  that  had  little 
connection  with  the  great  primal  impulses  that  came  from  the 
Civil  \Var  and  the  expansion  period  that  followed,  we  have  said 
nothing.  We  have  given  the  names  of  a  few  of  them  at  the 
close  of  chapter  17,  but  their  work  does  not  concern  our  study. 
\Vc  LINT  limited  ourselves  also  by  centering  our  attention  upon 
th«-  thiv,-  literary  forms,  poetry,  fiction,  and  the  essay.  History 
we  have  neglected  largely  for  the  reasons  given  at  the  opening  of 
chapter  18,  and  the  drama  for  the  reason  that  before  1892  there 
was  produced  no  American  drama  of  any  literary  value. 

Wf  would  express  here  our  thanks  to  the  many  librarians  and 
assistants  who  have  cooperated  toward  the  making  of  the  book 
possible,  and  especially  would  we  tender  our  thanks  to  Professor 
K.  W.  Conover  of  the  Kansas  Agricultural  College  who  helped 
to  prepare  the  index. 

F.  L.  P. 
State  College,  Pennsylvania, 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA 3 

II     THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST 25 

III  MARK  TWAIN 45 

IV  BRET  HARTE 63 

V     THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE   COUNTY 83 

VI     JOAQUIN    MILLER 99 

VII     THE    TRANSITION    POETS 116 

VIII     RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS 137 

IX     WALT  WHITMAN 163 

X     THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 186 

XI     RECORDERS   OF  THE   NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE 220 

XII     THE  NEW  ROMANCE 244 

XIII  LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH 271 

XIV  THE   ERA  OF   SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS      .      .      .       .294 
XV     THE    LATER   POETS 321 

XVI     THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE   SHORT   STORY 355 

XVII     SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION 385 

XVIII     THE  ESSAYISTS 416 

INDEX 441 


A  HISTORY  OF 

AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

SINCE   1870 


A  HISTORY  OF 
AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

SINCE  1870 


CHAPTER  I  ' 

*  i    ,  *     j         t> 

e      ">          >    •   >  3   o 

THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA 


"We  are  beginning  to  realize  that  the  Civil  "War  marks  a  divid 
ing  line  in  American  history  as  sharp  and  definitive  as  that 
burned  across  French  history  by  the  Revolution.  That  the  South 
had  been  vastly  affected  by  the  war  was  manifest  from  the  first. 
The  widespread  destruction  of  property,  the  collapse  of  the  labor 
system,  and  the  fall  of  the  social  regime  founded  on  negro  slavery, 
had  been  so  dramatic  and  so  revolutionary  in  their  results  that 
they  had  created  everywhere  a  feeling  that  the  ultimate  effects 
of  the  war  were  confined  to  the  conquered  territory.  Grady's 
phrase,  "the  new  South,''  and  later  the  phrase,  "the  end  of  an 
era,"  passing  everywhere  current,  served  to  strengthen  the  im 
pression.  That  the  North  had  been  equally  affected,  that  there 
also  an  old  regime  had  perished  and  a  new  era  been  inaugurated, 
was  not  so  quickly  realized.  The  change  there  had  been  un- 
dramatic ;  it  had  been  devoid  of  all  those  picturesque  accompani 
ments  that  had  been  so  romantic  and  even  sensational  in  the 
South ;  but  with  the  perspective  of  half  a  century  we  can  see  now 
that  it  had  been  no  less  thoroughgoing  and  revolutionary. 

The  first  effect  of  the  war  had  come  from  the  sudden  shifting 
of  vast  numbers  of  the  population  from  a  position  of  productive 
ness  to  one  of  dependence.  A  people  who  knew  only  peace  and 
who  were  totally  untrained  even  in  the  idea  of  war  were  called 
upon  suddenly  to  furnish  one  of  the  largest  armies  of  modern 

3 


4  AM  KK  1C  AN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

times  and  to  fight  to  an  end  the  most  bitterly  contested  conflict 
of  a  century.  First  and  last,  upwards  of  two  millions  of  men, 
the  most  of  them  citizen  volunteers,  drawn  all  of  them  from  the 
most  efficient  productive  class,  were  mustered  into  the  federal 
sen- ice  alone.  It  chanired  in  a  moment  the  entire  equilibrium  of 
American  industrial  life.  This  great  unproductive  army  had  to 
be  fed  and  clothed  and  armed  and  kept  in  an  enormously  waste 
ful  occupation.  But  the  farms  and  the  mills  and  the  great  trans 
portation  systems  had  been  drained  of  laborers  to  supply  men 
for  the  regiments.  The  wheatfields  had  no  han*esters;  the  Miss 
issippi  the  great  commercial  outlet  of  the  "West,  had  been  closed 
by  the  war,  and  the  railroads  were  insufficient  to  handle  the 
burden. 

priapplinp  with  ihis  mighty  problem  wrought  a  change  in 
the  North  that  was  a  revolution  in  itself.  The  lack  of  laborers  in 
the  han-est  fields  of  the  Middle  West  called  for  machinery,  and 
the  reaper  and  the  mowing  machine  for  the  first  time  sprang  into 
widespread  use :  the  strain  upon  the  railroads  brought  increased 
energy  and  efficiency  and  capital  to  bear  upon  the  problem  of 
transportation,  and  it  was  swiftly  solved.  Great  meat-packing 
houses  arose  to  meet  the  new  conditions ;  shoes  had  to  be  sent  to 
the  front  in  enormous  numbers  and  to  produce  them  a  new  and 
marvelous  machine  was  brought  into  use;  clothing  in  hitherto 
unheard-of  quantities  must  be  manufactured  and  sent  speedily, 
and  to  make  it  Howe's  sewing  machine  was  evolved.  It  was  a 
period  of  giant  tasks  thrust  suddenly  upon  a  people  seemingly  un 
prepared.  The  vision  of  the  country  became  all  at  once  enlarged. 
Companies  were  organized  for  colossal  undertakings.  Values 
and  wealth  arose  by  leaps  and  bounds.  Nothing  seemed  impos 
sible. 

The  war  educated  America.  It  educated  first  the  millions  of 
men  who  were  enrolled  in  the  armies.  With  few  exceptions  the 
soldiers  were  boys  who  had  never  before  left  their  native  neigh 
borhoods.  From  the  provincial  little  round  of  the  farm  or  the 
shop,  all  in  a  moment  they  plunged  into  regions  that  to  them 
were  veritable  foreign  lands  to  live  in  a  world  of  excitement  and 
stress,  with  e\vr-shifting  scenes  and  ever-deepening  responsibili 
ties,  for  three  and  four  and  even  five  years.  Whole  armies  of 
young  men  came  from  the  remote  hills  of  New  England.  Massa 
chusetts  alone  sent  159,000.  The  diffident  country  lad  was 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  5 

trained  harshly  in  the  roughest  of  classrooms.     He  was  forced  to 
measure  himself  with  men. 

The  whole  nation  was  in  the  classroom  of  war.  The  imperious 
call  for  leaders  of  every  grade  and  in  all  ranks  of  activity  devel 
oped  everywhere  out  of  raw  material  captains  of  men,  engineers, 
organizers,  business  directors,  financiers,  inventors,  directors  of 
activities,  on  a  scale  before  undreamed  of  in  America.  It  was  a 
college  course  in  which  were  developed  efficiency  and  self-reliance 
and  wideness  of  vision  and  courage  and  restless  activity,  and  it 
produced  a  most  remarkable  generation  of  men. 

The  armies  in  the  field  and  those  other  armies  that  handled  the 
railroads  and  the  mills  and  the  finances  and  supplies,  were  sons 
all  of  them  of  a  race  that  had  been  doubly  picked  in  the  genera 
tions  before,  for  only  the  bravest  and  most  virile  in  body  and 
soul  had  dared  to  break  from  their  old-world  surroundings  and 
plunge  into  the  untracked  West,  and  only  the  fittest  of  these  had 
survived  the  rigors  of  pioneer  days.  And  the  war  schooled  this 
remnant  and  widened  their  vision  and  ground  out  of  them  the 
provincialism  that  had  held  them  so  long  to  narrow  horizons.  It 
was  not  until  1865  that  Emerson  could  write,  "We  shall  not 
again  disparage  America  now  we  have  seen  what  men  it  will 
bear. ' '  But  the  chief  difference  between  these  men  and  the  early 
men  that  had  so  filled  him  with  apprehension  in  the  thirties  and 
the  forties,  was  in  the  schooling  which  had  come  from  the  five 
years  of  tension  when  the  very  life  of  the  nation  was  in  danger. 

The  disbanding  of  the  armies  was  followed  by  a  period  of  rest 
lessness  such  as  America  had  never  before  known.  The  whole 
population  wTas  restless.  "War,"  says  Emerson,  "passes  the 
power  of  all  chemical  solvents,  breaking  up  the  old  adhesions 
and  allowing  the  atoms  of  society  to  take  a  new  order. ' '  The  war 
had  set  in  motion  mighty  forces  that  did  not  stop  when  peace 
was  declared.  Men  who  had  been  trained  by  the  war  for  the 
organizing  and  directing  of  vast  activities  turned  quickly  to  new 
fields  of  effort.  The  railroads,  which  had  been  vastly  enlarged 
and  enriched  by  the  war,  pushed  everywhere  now  with  marvelous 
rapidity ;  great  industries,  like  the  new  oil  industry,  sprang  into 
wealth  and  power.  The  West,  lying  vast  and  unbroken  almost  i 
from  the  farther  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  burst  into  eager  life,  • 
and  the  tide  of  migration  which  even  before  the  war  had  turned 
strongly  toward  this  empire  of  the  plains  quickly  became  a  flood. 


6  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Railroads  wen-  pu -h.nl  along  the  wild  trails  and  over  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  The  first  transcontinental  road  was  completed  in 
1868.  The  great  buffalo  herds  were  exterminated  in  the  late 
sixties  and  early  seventies;  millions  of  acres  of  rich  land  were 
preempted  and  turned  over  to  agriculture;  the  greatest  wheat 
and  corn  belts  the  world  has  ever  known  were  brought  into  pro 
duction  almost  in  a  moment;  bridges  were  flung  over  rivers  and 
canons ;  vast  cities  of  the  plain  arose  as  by  magic.  Everywhere 
a  new  thrill  was  in  the  air.  The  Civil  War  had  shaken  America 
into  eager,  n-stl.-ss  life.  Mark  Twain,  who  was  a  part  of  it  all, 
could  say  in  later  days :  "The  eight  years  in  America  from  1860 
to  1868  uprooted  institutions  that  were  centuries  old,  changed  the 
politics  of  a  people,  transformed  the  social  life  of  half  the  coun- 
nd  wrought  so  profoundly  upon  the  entire  national  char- 
that  the  influence  cannot  be  measured  short  of  two  or  three 
generations. ' ' * 

To-day  we  can  begin  to  see  the  effect  which  the  mighty  exodus 
that  followed  the  war  had  upon  the  East.  It  was  little  short  of 
r.  volution.  New  England  had  taken  the  leading  place  in  pre 
cipitating  the  struggle  between  the  States,  and  she  had  done  it 
for  conscience*  sake,  and  now,  though  she  had  won  all  she  had 
asked,  by  a  curious  turn  of  fate  she  was  repaid  for  her  moral 
stand  by  the  loss  of  her  leadership  and  later  almost  of  her  iden 
tity,  for  the  westward  movement  that  followed  the  war  was  in 
New  England  a  veritable  exodus.  There  had  always  been  emi 
gration  from  the  older  States  and  it  had  gradually  increased 
during  th<>  gold  rush  period  and  the  Kansas-Nebraska  excitement, 
but  the  tide  had  never  been  large  enough  to  excite  apprehension. 
Now,  however,  all  in  a  moment  the  stream  became  a  torrent  which 
took  away,  as  does  all  emigration  from  older  lands,  the  most 
active  and  fearless  and  progressive  spirits.  Whole  districts  of 
farming  land  were  deserted  with  all  their  buildings  and  improve 
ments.  New  Hampshire  in  1860  had  a  population  of  326,073; 
in  1870  the  population  had  shnink  to  318,300,  and  that  despite 
the  fact  that  all  the  cities  and  manufacturing  towns  in  the  State 
had  grown  greatly  during  the  ten  years,  the  increase  consisting 
almost  wholly  of  foreigners.  According  to  Sanborn,  ''more  than 
a  million  acres  cultivated  in  1850  had  gone  back  to  pasturage 

i  The  Gilded  Age,  uniform  edition,  200. 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  7 

and  woodland  in  1900.  "2  All  growth  since  the  war  has  been 
confined  to  the  cities  and  the  larger  manufacturing  towns,  and 
this  growth  and  the  supplying  of  the  deficit  caused  by  the  emi 
gration  of  the  old  stock  have  come  from  an  ever-increasing  influx 
of  foreigners.  Boston  has  all  but  lost  its  old  identity.  In  Massa 
chusetts  in  1900  nearly  one-half  of  the  population  was  born  of 
foreign  parentage.  New  England  in  a  single  generation  lost  its 
scepter  of  power  in  the  North,  and  that  scepter  gradually  has 
been  moving  toward  the  new  West. 

II 

But  the  change  wrought  by  the  war  was  far  more  than  a  rise 
of  new  activities  and  a  shifting  of  population.  A  totally  new 
America  grew  from  the  ashes  of  the  great  conflict.  In  1860, 
North  and  South  alike  were  provincial  and  self-conscious.  New 
York  City  was  an  enormously  overgrown  village,  and  Boston  and 
Philadelphia  and  Charleston  were  almost  as  individual  and  as 
unlike  one  another  as  they  had  been  in  the  days  of  the  Revolution. 
There  had  been  nothing  to  fuse  the  sections  together  and  to  bring 
them  to  a  common  vision.  The  drama  of  the  settlement  had  been 
fierce  and  piteous,  but  it  had  been  a  great  series  of  local  episodes. 
The  Revolution  had  not  been  a  melting  pot  that  could  fuse  all  the 
sections  into  a  unity.  The  war  which  had  begun  in  New  England 
had  drifted  southward  and  each  battle,  especially  toward  the  end, 
had  been  largely  a  local  affair.  Until  1860,  there  had  been  no 
passion  fierce  enough  to  stir  to  the  very  center  of  their  lives  all 
of  the  people,  to  melt  them  into  a  homogeneous  mass,  and  to  pour 
them  forth  into  the  mold  of  a  new  individual  soul  among  the 
nations.  The  emphasis  after  1870  was  not  upon  the  State  but 
upon  the  Nation.  As  early  as  1867  a  writer  in  the  North  Ameri 
can  Review  declared  that,  "The  influence  of  our  recent  war  in 
developing  the  *  National  Sentiment'  of  the  people  can  hardly  be 
overestimated. ' '  3  Now  there  came  national  banks,  national  se 
curities,  a  national  railroad,  a  national  college  system, — every 
where  a  widening  horizon.  Provincialism  was  dying  in  every 
part  of  the  land. 

Until  1860,  America  had  been  full  of  the  discordant  individ 
uality  of  youth.  Its  characteristics,  all  of  them,  had  been  char- 

2  Sanborn's  New  Hampshire,  317. 

3  North  American  Review,  104:301. 


8  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

acteristies  of  that  turbulent,  unsettled  period  before  character  had 
hardened  into  its  final  form.  From  1820  to  1860  the  nation  was 
adolescent.  In  everything  at  least  that  concerned  its  intellectual 
life  it  was  imitative  and  dependent.  It  was  in  its  awkward  era, 
and  like  every  youth  was  uncouth  and  sensitive  and  self-con 
scious.  It  asked  eagerly  of  every  foreign  visitor,  "And  what  do 
you  think  of  us! "  and  when  the  answer,  as  in  the  case  of  Moore 
or  Marryat  or  Dickens,  was  critical,  it  flew  into  a  passion.  It 
was  sentimental  to  silliness.  As  late  as  1875  the  editor  of  Scrib- 
ner's  declared  that  a  large  number  of  all  the  manuscripts  sub 
mitted  to  publishing  houses  and  periodicals  were  declined  because 
of  their  sentimentality,  and  most  of  the  published  literature  of 
the  time,  he  added,  has  "a  vast  deal  of  sentimentality  sugared 
through  it."  That  was  in  1875;  a  few  years  before  that  date 
(JrUwold  had  published  his  Female  Poets  of  America,  and  there 
had  flourished  the  Token,  the  Forget-Me-Not,  and  the  Amaranth. 
Adolescence  is  always  sad : 

And  I  think  as  I  sit  alone, 

While  the  night  wind  is  falling  around, 

Of  a  cold  white  gleaming  stone 
And  a  long,  lone,  grassy  mound. 

The  age  had  sighed  and  wept  over  Charlotte  Temple,  a  romance 
which  went  through  edition  after  edition,  and  which,  according 
to  Higginson,  had  a  greater  number  of  readers  even  in  1870  than 
any  single  one  of  the  Waverley  Novels. 

But  even  as  it  sighed  over  its  Charlotte  Temple  and  its  Rose 
bud  and  its  Lamplighter,  it  longed  for  better  things.  It  had 
caught  a  glimpse,  through  Irving  and  Willis  and  Longfellow  and 
others,  of  the  culture  of  older  lands.  America  had  entered  its 
first  reading  age.  In  1844  Emerson  spoke  of  "our  immense 
reading  and  that  reading  chiefly  confined  to  the  productions  of 
the  English  press."  In  its  eagerness  for  culture  it  enlarged  its 
area  of  books  and  absorbed  edition  after  edition  of  translations 
from  the  German  and  Spanish  and  French.  It  established  every 
where  the  lyceum,  and  for  a  generation  America  sat  like  an  eager 
school-girl  at  the  feet  of  masters — Emerson  and  Beecher  and 
Taylor  and  Curtis  and  Phillips  and  Gough. 

But  adol* -s'M'iit  youth  is  the  period,  too,  of  spiritual  awaken 
ings,  of  religious  strugglings,  and  of  the  questioning  and  testing 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  9 

of  all  that  is  established.  For  a  period  America  doubted  all 
things.  It  read  dangerous  and  unusual  books — Fourier,  St. 
Simon,  Swedenborg,  Jouffroy,  Cousin.  It  challenged  the  dogmas 
of  the  Church.  It  worked  over  for  itself  all  the  fundamentals 
of  religion.  A  reviewer  in  the  first  volume  of  Scribner's  remarks 
of  the  fall  books  that,  as  usual,  theology  has  the  best  of  it.  ' '  Our 
poets  write  theology,  our  novels  are  theological  .  .  .  even  our 
statesmen  cannot  write  without  treating  theology. ' '  4  The  forties 
and  fifties  struggled  with  sensitive  conscience  over  the  great  prob 
lems  of  right  and  wrong,  of  altruism  and  selfish  ambition.  The 
age  was  full  of  dreams ;  it  longed  to  right  the  wrongs  of  the  weak 
and  the  oppressed;  to  go  forth  as  champions  of  freedom  and 
abstract  right ;  and  at  last  it  fought  it  out  with  agony  and  sweat 
of  blood  in  the  midnight  when  the  stars  had  hid  themselves  seem 
ingly  forever. 

The  Civil  War  was  the  Sturm  und  Drang  of  adolescent  Amer 
ica,  the  Gethsemane  through  which  every  earnest  young  life  must 
pass  ere  he  find  his  soul.  He  fails  to  understand  the  spirit  of 
our  land  who  misses  this  great  fact:  America  discovered  itself 
while  fighting  with  itself  in  a  struggle  for  things  that  are  not 
material  at  all,  but  are  spiritual  and  eternal.  The  difference  be 
tween  the  America  of  1850  and  that  of  1870  is  the  difference 
between  the  youth  of  sixteen  and  the  man  of  thirty.  Before  the 
war  the  bands  of  America  had  played  " Annie  Laurie"  and 
''Drink  to  Me  only  with  Thine  Eyes";  after  the  war  they  played 
"Rally  round  the  Flag"  and  "Mine  Eyes  have  Seen  the  Glory 
of  the  Coming  of  the  Lord." 

Ill 

The  effect  of  the  war  upon  American  literature  has  been  vari 
ously  estimated.  Stedman  has  been  quoted  often:  "The  Civil 
War  was  a  general  absorbent  at  the  crisis  when  a  second  group 
of  poets  began  to  form.  The  conflict  not  only  checked  the  rise 
of  a  new  school,  but  was  followed  by  a  time  of  languor  in  which 
the  songs  of  Apollo  seemed  trivial  to  those  who  had  listened  to 
the  shout  of  Mars."5  It  was  Richardson's  opinion  that  "little 
that  was  notable  was  added  to  the  literature  of  the  country  by 

*  Scribner's  Monthly,  i :  220. 
6  Poets  of  America,  437. 


10  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

the  Civil  War  of  1861.  .  .  .  The  creative  powers  of  our  best 
authors  seemed  somewhat  benumbed,  though  books  and  readers 
multiplied  between  1861  and  1865."°  And  Greenough  White 
dismisses  the  matter  with  the  remark  that  "after  the  war,  Bryant, 
Longfellow,  and  Taylor,  as  if  their  power  of  original  production 
was  exhausted,  turned  to  translation. ' ' T 

All  this  lacks  perspective.  Stedman  views  the  matter  from 
the  true  mid-century  standpoint.  Poetry  to  Stedman  and  Stod- 
dard  and  Hayne  and  Aldrich  and  Taylor  was  an  esoteric,  beau 
tiful  thing  to  be  worshiped  and  followed  for  itself  alone  like  a 
goddess,  a  being  from  another  sphere  than  ours,  to  devote  one's 
soul  to,  "like  the  lady  of  Shalott,"  to  quote  Stevenson,  "peering 
into  a  mirror  with  her  back  turned  on  all  the  bustle  and  glamour 
of  reality."  Keats  had  been  the  father  of  this  group  of  poets 
which  had  been  broken  in  upon  rudely  by  the  war,  and  it  had 
been  the  message  of  Keats  that  life  with  its  wretchedness  and  com- 
monplaceness  and  struggle  was  to  be  escaped  from  by  means  of 
Poesy: 

Away!  away!  for  I  will  fly  to  thce, 
Not  charioted  by  Bacchus  and  his  pards, 
But  on  the  viewless  wings  of  Poesy. 

But  poetry  is  the  voice  of  life;  it  is  not  an  avenue  by  which  to 
escape  from  life 's  problems.  The  poet  springs  from  his  times  and 
voices  his  era  because  he  must.  If  his  era  smothers  him,  then  so 
much  the  less  poet  he.  No  war  can  check  the  rise  of  a  new  school 
of  poets  if  the  soul  of  that  new  age  is  one  to  be  expressed  in 
poetry. 

What  Stedman  and  the  others  failed  to  see  was  the  new  Ameri 
can  soul  which  had  been  created  by  the  war  and  which  the  new 
school,  trained  in  the  old  conceptions  of  poetry,  was  powerless  to 
voice.  If  the  creative  powers  of  the  leading  authors  were 
numbed,  if  Bryant  and  Longfellow  and  Taylor  felt  that  their 
power  of  original  production  was  exhausted  and  so  turned  to 
translation,  it  was  because  they  felt  themselves  powerless  to  take 
wing  in  the  new  atmosphere. 

The  North  before  the  war  had  been  aristocratic  in  its  intel 
lectual  life,  just  as  the  South  had  been  aristocratic  in  its  social 
regime.  Literature  and  oratory  and  scholarship  had  been  accom- 

«f'rim>r  f,f  .\mrr\rnn  Literature,  revised  edition,  77. 
"  1'hilosophy  of  American  Literature,  65. 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA          11 

plishments  of  the  few.  J.  G.  Holland  estimated  in  1870  that  the 
lecturers  in  the  widespread  lyceum  system  when  it  was  at  its 
highest  point,  "those  men  who  made  the  platform  popular  and 
useful  and  apparently  indispensable,  did  not  number  more  than 
twenty-five. "  The  whole  New  England  period  was  dominated 
by  a  handful  of  men.  The  Saturday  Club,  which  contained  the 
most  of  them,  had,  according  to  Barrett  "Wendell,  twenty-six  mem 
bers  "all  typical  Boston  gentlemen  of  the  Renaissance."  How- 
ells  characterizes  it  as  a  "real  aristocracy  of  intellect.  To  say 
Prescott,  Motley,  Parkman,  Lowell,  Norton,  Higginson,  Dana, 
Emerson,  Channing,  was  to  say  patrician  in  the  truest  and  often 
the  best  sense,  if  not  the  largest."  It  is  significant  that  these 
were  all  Harvard  men.  The  period  was  dominated  by  college 
men.  In  addition  to  the  names  mentioned  by  Howells,  there 
might  be  added  from  the  New  England  colleges,  Webster,  Tick- 
nor,  Everett,  Bancroft,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Holmes,  Parker, 
Clarke,  Phillips,  Sumner,  Thoreau,  Parsons,  and  Hale.  Except 
ing  Poe,  who  for  a  time  was  a  student  at  the  University  of  Vir 
ginia  and  at  West  Point,  and  Whittier,  who  was  self-educated, 
and  two  women,  Margaret  Fuller  and  Mrs.  Stowe,  who  lived  in 
the  period  when  colleges  were  open  only  for  men,  the  list  contains 
all  the  leading  authors  of  the  mid-period  in  America. 

With  few  exceptions  these  names  come  from  what  Holmes  de 
nominates  "the  Brahmin  caste  of  New  England,"  a  term  which 
he  uses  to  distinguish  them  from  what  he  called  "the  homespun 
class" — "a  few  chosen  families  against  the  great  multitude." 
"Their  family  names  are  always  on  some  college  catalogue  or 
other."  From  1830  to  1870  the  creation  of  literature  was  very 
little  in  the  hands  of  the  masses;  it  was  in  the  hands  of  these 
scholars,  of  this  small  and  provincial  "aristocracy  of  intellect." 
Holmes,  who  gloried  in  the  fact  that  he  lived  in  Boston,  '  *  the  hub 
of  the  universe, ' '  on  Beacon  Street,  ' '  the  sunny  street  that  holds 
the  sifted  few,"  may  be  taken  as  a  type  of  this  aristocracy.  It 
was  a  period  of  the  limited  circle  of  producers,  and  of  mutual 
admiration  within  the  circumference  of  that  circle.  Each  mem 
ber  of  the  group  took  himself  with  great  seriousness  and  was 
taken  at  his  own  valuation  by  the  others.  When  the  new  demo 
cratic,  after-the-war  America,  in  the  person  of  Mark  Twain, 
came  into  the  circle  and  in  the  true  Western  style  made  free  with 
sacred  personalities,  he  was  received  with  frozen  silence. 


1-J  AMERICAN  LITKHATTRK  SINCE  1870 

The  school,  on  the  whole,  stood  aloof  from  the  civil  and  re 
ligious  activities  of  its  period.  With  the  exception  of  Whittier, 
who  was  not  a  Brahmin,  the  larger  figures  of  the  era  took  interest 
in  the  great  issues  of  their  generation  only  when  these  issues 
had  been  forced  into  the  field  of  their  emotions.  They  were 
bookish  men,  and  they  were  prone  to  look  not  into  their  hearts 
or  into  the  heart  of  their  epoch,  but  into  their  libraries.  In  1856, 
when  America  was  smoldering  with  what  so  soon  was  to  burst 
out  into  a  maelstrom  of  fire,  Longfellow  wrote  in  his  journal, 
"Dined  with  Agassiz  to  meet  Emerson  and  others.  I  was  amused 
and  annoyed  to  see  how  soon  the  conversation  drifted  off  into 
politics.  It  was  not  till  after  dinner  in  the  library  that  we  got 
upon  anything  really  interesting."8  The  houses  of  the  Brah 
mins  had  only  eastern  windows.  The  souls  of  the  whole  school 
lived  in  the  old  lands  of  culture,  and  they  visited  these  lands  as 
oft i -n  as  they  could,  and,  returning,  brought  back  whole  libraries 
of  books  which  they  eagerly  translated.  Even  Lowell,  the  most 
democratic  American  of  the  group,  save  Whittier,  wrote  from 
Paris  in  1873,  "In  certain  ways  this  side  is  more  agreeable  to 
my  tastes  than  the  other. "  And  again  the  next  year  he  wrote 
from  Florence:  "America  is  too  busy,  too  troubled  about  many 
things,  and  Martha  is  only  good  to  make  puddings. ' ' 

1 1 1  >\vells  in  his  novel,  A  Woman 's  Reason,  has  given  us  a  view 
of  this  American  worship  of  Europe  during  this  period.  Says 
Lord  Rainford,  who  has  been  only  in  Boston  and  Newport:  "I 
find  your  people — your  best  people,  I  suppose  they  are — very 
nice,  very  intelligent,  very  pleasant — only  talk  about  Europe. 
They  talk  about  London,  and  about  Paris,  and  about  Rome ;  there 
seems  to  be  quite  a  passion  for  Italy ;  but  they  don 't  seem  inter 
ested  in  their  own  country.  I  can't  make  it  out.  .  .  .  They 
always  seem  to  have  been  reading  the  Fortnightly,  and  the  Satur- 
'/'///  /.'<  r'n  ir.  ;mil  the  Spiff  ator,  and  the  h'cvuc  c/r.v  Dens  Mondcs, 
and  the  last  French  and  English  books.  It  's  very  odd." 

Europe  colors  the  whole  epoch.  Following  Irving 's  Sketch 
Book,  a  small  library  was  written  by  eager  souls  to  whom  Europe 
was  a  wonderland  and  a  dream.  Longfellow's  Outre  Mer  and 
Hyperion,  Tuckerman's  Italian  Sketch  Book,  Willis's  Pencillings 
l»i  the  Way,  Cooper's  Gleanings  in  Europe,  Sanderson's  Sketches 
of  1'aris,  Sprague's  Letters  from  Europe,  Colton's  Four  Years  in 

•Longfellow's  Henry  Wadsieorth  Longfellow,  ii:  308. 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA          13 

Great  Britain,  Taylor's  Views  Afoot,  Bryant's  Letters  of  a  Trav 
eller,  Curtis 's  Nile  Notes  of  a  Howadji,  Greeley's  Glances  at 
Europe,  Mrs.  Stowe's  Sunny  Memories  of  Foreign  Lands,  Nor 
ton's  Notes  of  Travel  and  Study  in  Italy,  Hawthorne's  Our  Old 
Home,  Cal vert's  Scenes  and  Thoughts  in  Europe,  and,  after  the 
war,  Howells  's  Venetian  Life,  and  Hay 's  Castilian  Days  are  only 
the  better-known  books  of  the  list.  "Our  people,"  complained 
Emerson,  "have  their  intellectual  culture  from  one  country  and 
their  duties  from  another,"  and  it  was  so  until  after  the  Civil 
War  had  given  to  America  a  vision  of  her  own  self.  Innocents' 
Abroad  was  the  first  American  book  about  Europe  that  stood 
squarely  on  its  own  feet  and  told  what  it  saw  without  senti 
mentality  or  romantic  colorings  or  yieldings  to  the  conventional. 
After  Innocents  Abroad  there  were  no  more  rhapsodies  of 
Europe. 

America  was  a  new  land  with  a  new  message  and  new  problems 
and  a  new  hope  for  mankind — a  hope  as  .great  as  that  which  had 
fired  the  imagination  of  Europe  during  the  years  of  the  French 
Revolution,  yet  American  writers  of  the  mid-century  were  content 
to  look  into  their  books  and  echo  worn  old  themes  of  other  lands. 
The  Holmes  who  in  his  youth  had  written  Old  Ironsides  was 
content  now  with  vers  de  societe, 

I  'm  a  florist  in  verse,  and  what  would  people  say 
If  I  came  to  a  banquet  without  my  bouquet  ? 

And  with  the  thrill  and  rush  of  a  new  nation  all  about  him, 
Stoddard  could  sit  in  his  study  turning  out  pretty  Herrick-like 
trifles  like  this : 

Why  are  red  roses  red? 
For  roses  once  were  white, 
Because  the  loving  nightingales 

Sang  on  their  thorns  all  night — 
Sang  till  the  blood  they  shed 
Had  dyed  the  roses  red. 

It  was  a  period  when  both  Europe  and  America  were  too  much 
dominated  by  what  Boyesen  called  "the  parlor  poet,"  "who 
stands  aloof  from  life,  retiring  into  the  close-curtained  privacy 
of  his  study  to  ponder  upon  some  abstract,  bloodless,  and  sexless 
theme  for  the  edification  of  a  Uase,  over-refined  public  with 
nerves  that  can  no  longer  relish  the  soul-stirring  passions  and 


14  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

emotions  of  a  healthy  and  active  humanity."  In  Europe,  the 
reaction  from  this  type  of  work  came  with  Millet,  the  peasant 
painter  of  France,  with  Tolstoy  and  the  Russian  realists,  with 
•  and  Flaubert  in  France,  with  Hardy  in  England,  with 
Ibsen  and  Bjornson  in  Norway,  workers  with  whom  art  was  life 

toll 

America  especially  had  been  given  to  softness  and  sentimental- 
ism.  During  the  mid-century  era,  the  period  of  Longfellow,  the 
lusty  new  nation,  which  was  developing  a  new  hope  for  all  man 
kind,  had  asked  for  bread  and  it  had  been  given  all  too  often 
" lucent  syrops  tinct  with  cinnamon."  The  oratory  had  been 
eloquent,  sometimes  grandiloquent.  The  prose,  great  areas  of 
it,  had  been  affected,  embellished  with  a  certain  florid  youngman- 
ishness,  a  honey-gathering  of  phrases  even  to  the  point  of  bad 
taste,  as  when  Lowell  wrote  of  Milton:  "A  true  Attic  bee,  he 
made  boot  on  every  lip  where  there  was  a  taste  of  truly  classic 
honey. '  '  It  was  the  time  when  ornateness  of  figure  and  poetical- 
ness  of  diction  were  regarded  as  essentials  of  style. 

To  understand  what  the  Civil  War  destroyed  and  what  it  cre 
ated,  at  least  in  the  field  of  prose  style,  one  should  read  the  two 
orations  delivered  at  the  dedication  of  the  Gettysburg  battlefield. 
Here  was  the  moment  of  transition  between  the  old  American  lit 
erature  and  the  new.  Everett,  the  eloquent  voice  of  New  Eng 
land,  correct,  polished,  fervid,  massing  perfect  periods  to  a  cli 
max,  scholarly,  sonorous  of  diction,  studied  of  movement,  finished, 
left  the  platform  after  his  long  effort,  satisfied.  The  eyes  of  the 
few  who  could  judge  of  oratory  as  a  finished  work  of  art  had 
been  upon  him  and  he  had  stood  the  test.  Then  had  come  for  a 
single  moment  the  Man  of  the  West,  the  plain  man  of  the  people, 
retiring,  ungainly,  untrained  in  the  smooth  school  of  art,  voicing 
in  simple  words  a  simple  message,  wrung  not  from  books  but 
from  the  depths  of  a  soul  deeply  stirred,  and  now,  fifty  years 
later,  the  oration  of  Everett  can  be  found  only  by  reference 
lilirarians,  while  the  message  of  Lincoln  is  declaimed  by  every 
school-box . 

The  half-century  since  the  war  has  stood  for  the  rise  of  na 
tionalism  and  of  populism,  not  in  the  narrower  political  mean 
ings  of  these  words,  but  in  the  generic  sense.  The  older  group 
of  writers  had  been  narrowly  provincial.  Hawthorne  wrote  to 
Bridge  shortly  before  the  war:  "At  present  we  have  no  coun- 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  15 

try.  .  .  .  The  States  are  too  various  and  too  extended  to  form 
really  one  country.  New  England  is  really  as  large  a  lump  of 
earth  as  my  heart  can  take  in. "  9  The  war  shook  America  awake, 
it  destroyed  sectionalism,  and  revealed  the  nation  to  itself.  It 
was  satisfied  no  longer  with  theatrical  effects  without  real  feel 
ing.  After  the  tremendous  reality  of  the  war,  it  demanded  gen 
uineness  and  the  truth  of  life.  A  new  spirit — social,  dramatic, 
intense — took  the  place  of  the  old  dreaming  and  sentiment  and 
sadness.  The  people  had  awakened.  The  intellectual  life  of 
the  nation  no  longer  was  to  be  in  the  hands  of  the  aristocratic, 
scholarly  few.  Even  while  the  war  was  in  progress  a  bill  had 
passed  Congress  appropriating  vast  areas  of  the  public  lands  for 
the  establishment  in  every  State  of  a  college  for  the  people  "to 
promote  the  liberal  and  practical  education  of  the  industrial 
classes  in  the  several  pursuits  and  professions  of  life,"  and  it 
is  significant  that  Lincoln,  the  first  great  President  of  the  people, 
signed  the  bill. 

IV 

The  chief  output  of  the  new  era  was  in  the  form  of  realistic 
fiction.  America,  shaken  from  narrow  sectionalism  and  contem 
plation  of  Europe,  woke  up  and  discovered  America.  In  a  kind 
of  astonishment  she  wandered  from  section  to  section  of  her  own 
land,  discovering  everywhere  peoples  and  manners  and  languages 
that  were  as  strange  to  her  even  as  foreign  lands.  Mark  Twain 
and  Harte  and  Miller  opened  to  view  the  wild  regions  and  wilder 
society  of  early  California  and  the  Sierra  Nevadas;  Eggleston 
pictured  the  primitive  settlements  of  Indiana;  Cable  told  the 
romance  of  the  Creoles  and  of  the  picturesque  descendants  of 
the  Acadians  on  the  bayous  of  Louisiana ;  Page  and  Harris  and 
F.  II.  Smith  and  others  caught  a  vision  of  the  romance  of  the  old 
South ;  Allen  told  of  Kentucky  life ;  Miss  French  of  the  dwellers 
in  the  canebrakes  of  Arkansas;  and  Miss  Murfree  of  a  strange 
people  in  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains  of  Tennessee.  In  twenty 
years  every  isolated  neighborhood  in  America  had  had  its  chron 
icler  and  photographer. 

The  spirit  of  the  New  America  was  realistic.  There  had  been 
dreaming  and  moonlight  and  mystery  enough;  now  it  wanted 
concrete  reality.  "Give  us  the  people  as  they  actually  are. 

»  Woodberry's  Hawthorne,  281. 


16  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Oivo  us  their  talk  as  they  actually  talk  it,"  and  the  result  was 
the  age  of  dialect— dialect  poetry,  dialect  fiction,  dialect  even  to 
coarseness  and  profanity.  The  old  school  in  the  East  stood 
aghast  before  what  they  termed  this  '  *  Neo-Americanism, "  this 
coarse  "new  literature  of  the  people."  Holland  in  1872  found 
"Truthful  James"  "deadly  wearisome."  He  hoped  that  the 
poet  had  "found,  as  his  readers  have,  sufficient  amusement  in  the 
*  Heathen  Chinee*  and  the  'Society  upon  the  Stanislaus'  and  is 
ready  for  more  serious  work."  From  this  wearisome  stuff  he 
then  turned  to  review  in  highest  terms  Stoddard's  Book  of  the 
East,  a  land  which  Stoddard  had  never  visited  save  in  dreams. 

The  reviewer  of  Maurice  Thompson's  Hoosier  Mosaics  four 
years  later  speaks  of  the  author  as  a  promising  acquisition  to 
"the  invading  Goths  from  over  the  mountains."  Stedman 
viewed  the  new  tide  with  depression  of  soul.  In  a  letter  to  Taylor 
in  1873  he  says : 

Lars  is  a  poem  that  will  last,  though  not  in  the  wretched,  immediate 
fashion  of  this  demoralized  American  period.  Cultured  as  are  Hay 
and  Harte,  they  are  almost  equally  responsible  with  ''Josh  Billings" 
and  the  Danbury  News  man  for  the  present  horrible  degeneracy  of  the 
public  taste — that  is,  the  taste  of  the  present  generation  of  book-buyers. 

I  feel  that  this  is  not  the  complaint  of  a  superannuated  Roger  de 
Coverley  nor  Colonel  Newcome,  for  I  am  in  the  prime  and  vigor  of 
active,  noonday  life,  and  at  work  right  here  in  the  metropolis.  It  is 
a  clear-headed,  wide-awake  statement  of  a  disgraceful  fact.  With  it 
all  I  acknowledge,  the  demand  for  good  books  also  increases  and  such 
works  as  Paine's  Septembre,  etc.,  have  a  large  standard  sale.  But  in 
poetry  readers  have  tired  of  the  past  and  don't  see  clearly  how  to  shape 
a  future;  and  so  content  themselves  with  going  to  some  "Cave"  or 
"Hole  in  the  Wall"  and  applauding  slang  and  nonsense,  spiced  with 
smut  and  profanity.10 

This  is  an  extreme  statement  of  the  conditions,  but  it  was 
written  by  the  most  alert  and  clear-eyed  critic  of  the  period,  one 
who,  even  while  he  deplored  the  conditions,  was  wise  enough  to 
recognize  the  strength  of  the  movement  and  to  ally  himself  with 
it.  "Get  hold  of  a  dramatic  American  theme,"  he  counsels 
Taylor,  "merely  for  policy's  sake.  The  people  want  Neo-Araeri- 
canism ;  we  must  adopt  their  system  and  elevate  it. ' '  Wise  ad 
vice  indeed,  but  Taylor  had  his  own  ideals.  After  the  failure 
of  The  Masque  of  the  Gods  he  wrote  Aldrich:  "If  this  public 

10  Life  and  Letters  of  E.  C.  Stcdman,  i :  477. 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA          17 

won't  accept  my  better  work,  I  must  wait  till  a  new  one  grows 
up.  ...  I  will  go  on  trying  to  do  intrinsically  good  things,  and 
will  not  yield  a  hair's  breadth  for  the  sake  of  conciliating  an 
ignorant  public. ' '  u 


The  exploiting  of  new  and  strange  regions,  with  their  rough 
manners,  their  coarse  humor,  and  their  uncouth  dialects,  brought 
to  the  front  the  new,  hard-fought,  and  hard-defended  literary 
method  called  realism.  For  a  generation  the  word  was  on  every 
critic's  pen  both  in  America  and  abroad.  No  two  seemed  per 
fectly  to  agree  what  the  term  really  meant,  or  what  writers  were 
to  be  classed  as  realists  and  what  as  romanticists.  It  is  becoming 
clearer  now :  it  was  simply  the  new,  young,  vigorous  tide  which 
had  set  in  against  the  decadent,  dreamy  softness  that  had  ruled 
the  mid  years  of  the  century. 

The  whole  history  of  literature  is  but  the  story  of  an  alter 
nating  current.  A  new,  young  school  of  innovators  arises  to 
declare  the  old  forms  lifeless  and  outworn.  Wordsworth  at  the 
opening  of  the  nineteenth  century  had  protested  against  un 
reality  and  false  sentiment — "a  dressy  literature,  an  exagger 
ated  literature"  as  Bagehot  expressed  it — and  he  started  the 
romantic  revolt  by  proposing  in  his  poems  "to  choose  incidents 
and  situations  from  common  life,  and  to  relate  or  describe  them, 
throughout,  as  far  as  was  possible  in  a  selection  of  language  really 
used  by  men."  Revolt  always  has  begun  with  the  cry  "back  to 
nature";  it  is  always  the  work  of  young  men  who  have  no  rev 
erence  for  the  long-standing  and  the  conventional;  and  it  is 
always  looked  upon  with  horror  by  the  older  generations.  Jef 
frey,  in  reviewing  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  said  that  the  "Ode  on 
Intimations  of  Immortality"  was  "beyond  doubt  the  most  illegi 
ble  and  unintelligible  part  of  the  publication.  We  can  pretend 
to  give  no  analysis  or  explanation  of  it. ' '  At  last  the  revolt  tri 
umphs,  and  as  the  years  go  on  its  ideas  in  turn  are  hardened 
into  rules  of  art.  Then  suddenly  another  group  of  daring  young 
souls  arises,  and,  setting  its  back  upon  the  old,  blazes  out  a  new 
pathway  toward  what  it  considers  to  be  truth  and  nature  and 
art.  This  new  school  of  revolt  from  the  old  and  outworn  we 

*J  Life  and  Letters  of  Bayard  Taylor,  ii :  588. 


18  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

call  always  tin*  now  romantic  movement.  It  is  only  the  new  gen 
eration  pressing  upon  the  old,  and  demanding  a  fresh  statement 
of  life  in  tt-nns  of  truth  to  present  conditions. 

In  America,  and  indeed  in  Europe  as  well,  the  early  seventies 
called  for  this  new  statement  of  art.  No  more  Hyperions,  no 
more  conceits  and  mere  prettinesses,  no  more  fine  phrasing,  no 
more  castles  in  Spain,  but  life  real  and  true,  naked  in  its  abso 
lute  faithfulness  to  facts.  It  was  a  revolt.  If  we  call  the  age  of 
Longfellow  a  romantic  period,  then  this  revolt  of  the  seventies 
was  a  ;i cw  romanticism,  for  romanticism  always  in  broadest  sense 
is  a  revolution  against  orthodoxy,  against  the  old  which  has 
been  so  long  established  that  it  has  lost  its  first  vitality  and  be 
come  an  obedience  to  the  letter  rather  than  to  the  spirit. 

The  new  movement  seemed  to  the  Brahmins  of  the  older  school 
a  v«-ritable  renaissance  of  vulgarity.  Even  Lowell,  who  had  writ 
ten  the  nitjlnw  Papers,  cried  out  against  it.  The  new  literature 
from  the  West  and  the  South  was  the  work  of  what  Holmes  had 
called  "the  homespun  class,"  "the  great  multitude."  It  was 
written,  almost  all  of  it,  by  authors  from  no  college.  They  had 
been  educated  at  the  printer's  case,  on  the  farm,  in  the  mines, 
and  along  the  frontiers.  As  compared  with  the  roll  of  the  Brah 
mins  the  list  is  significant:  Whitman,  Warner,  Helen  Jackson, 
Stockton,  Shaw,  Clemens,  Piatt,  Thaxter,  Howells,  Eggleston, 
Burroughs,  F.  H.  Smith,  Hay,  Harte,  Miller,  Cable,  Gilder,  Allen, 
Harris,  Jewett,  Wilkins,  Murfree,  Riley,  Page,  Russell.  The 
whole  school  thrilled  with  the  new  life  of  America,  and  they  wrote 
often  without  models  save  as  they  took  life  itself  as  their  model. 
Coarse  and  uncouth  some  parts  of  their  work  might  be,  but  teem 
ing  it  always  was  with  the  freshness,  the  vitality,  and  the  vigor  of 
a  new  soil  and  a  newly  awakened  nation. 

VI 

\The  new  period  began  in  the  early  seventies.  The  years  of 
the  war  and  the  years  immediately  following  it  were  fallow  so 
far  as  significant  literary  output  was  concerned.  "Literature 
is  at  a  standstill  in  America,  paralyzed  by  the  Civil  War,"  wrote 
Stedman  in  1864,  and  at  a  later  time  he  added,  "For  ten  years 
the  new  generation  read  nothing  but  newspapers."  The  old 
group  was  still  producing  voluminously,  but  their  work  was  done. 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  19 

They  had  been  borne  into  an  era  in  which  they  could  have  no 
part,  and  they  contented  themselves  with  reechoings  of  the  old 
music  and  with  translations.  In  1871  The  London  School  Board 
Chronicle  could  declare  that,  "The  most  gifted  of  American 
singers  are  not  great  as  creators  of  home-bred  poetry,  but  as 
translators,"  and  then  add  without  reservation  that  the  best 
translations  in  the  English  language  had  been  made  in  America. 
It  was  the  statement  of  a  literal  fact.  Within  a  single  period  of 
six  years,  from  1867  to  1872,  there  appeared  Longfellow's  Di- 
vina  Commedia,  C.  E.  Norton's  Vita  Nuova,  T.  "W.  Parsons'  In 
ferno,  Bryant's  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  Taylor's  Faust  and  C.  P. 
Cranch's  Mneid. 

It  was  the  period  of  swan  songs.  Emerson's  Terminus  came 
in  1866;  Last  Poems  of  the  Cary  sisters,  Longfellow's  Aftermath 
and  Whittier's  Hazel  Blossoms  appeared  in  1874;  and  Holmes 's 
The  Iron  Gate  was  published  in  1880.  Lowell,  the  youngest  of 
the  group,  alone  seemed  to  have  been  awakened  by  the  war. 
His  real  message  to  America,  the  national  odes  and  the  essays 
on  Democracy  which  will  make  his  name  permanent  in  literature, 
came  after  1865,  and  so  falls  into  the  new  period. 

The  decade  from  1868  is  in  every  respect  the  most  vital  and 
significant  one  in  the  history  of  America.  The  tremendous 
strides  which  were  then  made  in  the  settlement  of  the  West,  the 
enormous  increase  of  railroads  and  steamships  and  telegraphs, 
the  organization  of  nation-wide  corporations  like  those  dealing 
with  petroleum  and  steel  and  coal — all  these  we  have  already 
mentioned.  America  had  thrown  aside  its  provincialism  and  had 
become  a  great  neighborhood,  and  in  1876  North,  South,  East, 
and  West  gathered  in  a  great  family  jubilee.  Scribner's  Monthly 
in  1875  commented  feelingly  upon  the  fact : 

All  the  West  is  coming  East.  .  .  .  The  Southern  States  will  be  simi 
larly  moved.  .  .  .  There  will  be  a  tremendous  shaking  up  of  the  people, 
a  great  going  to  and  fro  in  the  land.  .  .  .  The  nation  is  to  be  brought 
together  as  it  has  never  been  brought  before  during  its  history.  In  one 
hundred  years  of  intense  industry  and  marvelous  development  we  have 
been  so  busy  that  we  never  have  been  able  to  look  one  another  in  the 
face,  except  four  terrible  years  of  Civil  War.  .  .  .  This  year  around 
the  old  family  altar  at  Philadelphia  we  expect  to  meet  and  embrace  as 
brothers.12 

12  Scrilner's  Monthly,  xi:  432. 


20  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  Centennial  quickened  in  every  way  the  national  life.  It 
gave  for  the  first  time  the  feeling  of  unity,  the  realization  that 
thr  vast  West,  the  new  South,  and  the  uncouth  frontier  were  a 
vital  part  of  the  family  of  the  States.  Lowell,  so  much  of  whose 
early  heart  and  soul  had  been  given  to  Europe,  discovered  Amer 
ica  in  this  same  Centennial  year.  In  Cincinnati  he  was  pro 
foundly  impressed  with  the  "  wonderful  richness  and  comfort 
of  the  country  and  with  the  distinctive  Americanism  that  is 
molding  into  one  type  of  feature  and  habits  so  many  races  that 
had  widely  diverged  from  the  same  original  stock.  .  .  .  These 
immense  spaces  tremulous  with  the  young  grain,  trophies  of 
individual,  or  at  any  rate  unorganized,  courage  and  energy,  of 
the  people  and  not  of  dynasties,  were  to  me  inexpressibly  im- 
ive  and  even  touching.  .  .  .  The  men  who  have  done  and 
are  doing  these  things  know  how  things  should  be  done.  ...  It 
was  very  interesting,  also,  to  meet  men  from  Kansas  and  Nevada 
and  California,  and  to  see  how  manly  and  intelligent  they  were, 
and  especially  what  large  heads  they  had.  They  had  not  the 
manners  of  Vere  de  Vere,  perhaps,  but  they  had  an  independence 
and  self-respect  which  are  the  prime  element  of  fine  bearing."  13 
A  little  of  a  certain  Brahmin  condescension  toward  Westerners 
there  may  be  here,  but  on  the  whole  it  rings  true.  The  East 
was  discovering  the  West  and  was  respecting  it. 

And  now  all  of  a  sudden  this  Neo- Americanism  burst  forth  into 
literature.  There  is  a  similarity  almost  startling  between  the 
thirties  that  saw  the  outburst  of  the  mid-century  school  and  the 
vital  seventies  that  arose  in  reaction  against  it.  The  first  era 
had  started  with  Emerson's  glorification  of  the  American  scholar, 
the  second  had  glorified  the  man  of  action.  The  earlier  period 
was  speculative,  sermonic,  dithyrambic,  eloquent ;  the  new  Amer 
ica  which  now  arose  was  cold,  dispassionate,  scientific,  tolerant. 
Both  had  arisen  in  storm  and  doubt  and  in  protest  against  the 
old.  Both  touched  the  people,  the  earlier  era  through  the  senti 
ments,  the  later  through  the  analytical  and  the  dramatic  facul 
ties.  In  the  thirties  had  arisen  Godey's  Lady's  Book;  in  the 
seventies  Scribner's  Monthly. 

So  far  as  literature  was  concerned  the  era  may  be  said  really 
to  have  commenced  in  1869  with  Innocents  Abroad,  the  first  book 
from  which  there  breathed  the  new  wild  spirit  of  revolt.  In 

-  Norton's  Letters  of  James  Russell  Lowell,  ii:    169 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA          21 

1870  came  Harte's  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  thrilling  with  the  new 
strange  life  of  the  gold  coast  and  the  Sierra  Nevada,  and  War 
ner's  My  Summer  in  a  Garden,  a  transition  book  fresh  and  de 
lightful.  Then  in  1871  had  begun  the  deluge:  Burroughs 's 
Wake-Robin,  with  its  new  gospel  of  nature;  Eggleston's  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster,  fresh  with  uncouth  humor  and  the  strangeness  of 
the  frontier;  Harte's  East  and  West  Poems;  Hay's  Pike  County 
Ballads,  crude  poems  from  the  heart  of  the  people;  Howells's 
first  novel,  TJieir  Wedding  Journey,  a  careful  analysis  of  actual 
social  conditions;  Miller's  Songs  of  the  Sierras;  Carleton's  Poems; 
King's  Mountaineering  in  the  Sierra  Nevada,  a  book  of  travel 
glorifying  not  Europe  but  a  picturesque  section  of  America ;  and 
the  completed  version  of  Leland's  Hans  Breitmann's  Ballads,  a 
book  which  had  waited  fourteen  years  for  a  publisher  who  had 
the  courage  to  bring  it  out.  In  1873  came  Celia  Thaxter's 
Poems,  Aldrich's  Majorie  Daw,  H.  H.'s  Saxe  Holm  Stories,  Wal 
lace's  Fair  God  and  O'Reilly's  Songs  of  the  Southern  Seas;  in 
1875  James's  Passionate  Pilgrim,  Thompson's  Hoosier  Mosaics, 
Gilder's  The  New  Day,  Lanier's  Poems,  Catherwood's  A  Woman 
in  Armor,  Woolson's  Castle  Nowhere  and  Irwin  Russell's  first 
poem  in  Scribner's;  in  1877  Burnett's  That  Lass  o'  Lowrie's  and 
Jewett's  Deephaven;  in  1878  Craddock's  The  Dancing  Party  at 
Harrison's  Cove  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  Richard  M.  Johnston's 
Life  of  Stephens;  in  1879  Cable's  Old  Creole  Days,  Tourgee's 
Figs  and  Thistles,  Stockton's  Rudder  Grange,  and  John  Muir's 
Studies  in  the  Sierras,  in  Scribner's.  All  the  elements  of  the 
new  era  had  appeared  before  1880. 

The  old  traditions  were  breaking.  In  1874  the  editorial  chair 
of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  the  exclusive  organ  of  the  old  New 
England  regime,  was  given  to  a  Westerner.  In  1873  came  the 
resurgence  of  Whitman.  The  earlier  school  had  ignored  him, 
or  had  tolerated  him  because  of  Emerson,  but  now  with  the  new 
discovery  of  America  he  also  was  discovered,  and  hailed  as  a 
pioneer.  The  new  school  of  revolt  in  England — Rossetti,  Swin 
burne,  Symonds — declared  him  a  real  voice,  free  and  individual, 
the  voice  of  all  the  people.  Thoreau  also  came  into  his  true  place. 
His  own  generation  had  misunderstood  him,  compared  him  with 
Emerson,  and  neglected  him.  Only  two  of  his  books  had  been 
published  during  his  lifetime  and  one  of  these  had  sold  fewer  than 
three  hundred  copies.  Now  he  too  was  discovered.  In  the  words 


L'-J  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

of  Burroughs,  "His  fame  lias  increased  steadily  since  his  death 
in  1862,  as  it  was  bound  to  do.  It  was  little  more  than  in  the 
bud  at  that  time,  and  its  full  leaf  and  flowering  are  not  yet." 

VII 

The  new  age  was  to  express  itself  in  prose.  The  poetry  of  the 
earlier  period,  soft  and  lilting  and  romantic,  no  longer  satisfied. 
It  was  effeminate  in  tone  and  subject,  and  the  new  West,  virile 
and  awake,  defined  a  poet,  as  Wordsworth  had  defined  him  in 
1815,  as  "a  man  speaking  to  men."  America,  in  the  sturdy 
vigor  of  manhood,  wrestling  with  fierce  realities,  had  passed  the 
age  of  dreaming.  It  had  now  to  deal  with  social  problems,  with 
plans  on  a  vast  scale  for  the  bettering  of  human  conditions,  with 
the  organization  of  cities  and  schools  and  systems  of  government. 
It  was  a  busy,  headlong,  multitudinous  age.  Poetry,  to  interest 
it,  must  be  sharp  and  incisive  and  winged  with  a  message.  It 
must  be  lyrical  in  length  and  spirit,  and  it  must  ring  true. 
If  it  deal  with  social  themes  it  must  be  perfect  in  characteriza 
tion  and  touched  with  genuine  pathos,  like  the  folk  songs  of 
Riley  and  Drummond,  or  the  vers  de  societe  of  Bunner  and 
Eugene  Field.  If  it  touch  national  themes,  it  must  be  strong 
and  trumpet  clear,  like  the  odes  of  Lowell  and  Lanier.  It  must 
not  spring  from  the  far  off  and  the  forgot  but  from  the  life  of 
the  day  and  the  hour,  as  sprung  Whitman's  Lincoln  elegies, 
Joaquin  Miller's  "Columbus,"  and  Stedman's  war  lyrics.  Not 
many  have  there  been  who  have  brought  message  and  thrill,  but 
there  have  been  enough  to  save  the  age  from  the  taunt  that  it 
was  a  period  without  poets. 

In  a  broad  sense,  no  age  has  ever  had  more  of  poetry,  for  the 
message  and  the  vision  and  thrill,  which  in  older  times  came 
through  epic  and  lyric  and  drama,  have  in  the  latter  days  come 
in  full  measure  through  the  prose  form  which  we  call  the  novel. 
As  a  form  it  has  been  brought  to  highest  perfection.  It  has  been 
found  to  have  scope  enough  to  exercise  the  highest  powers  of  a 
great  poet,  and  allow  him  to  sound  all  the  depths  and  shallows 
<if  human  life.  It  has  been  the  preacher  of  the  age,  the  theater, 
the  minstrel,  and  the  social  student,  the  prophet  and  seer  and 
rv former.  It  has  been  more  than  the  epic  of  democracy;  it  has 
been  horn-book  as  well  and  shepherd's  calendar.  It  has  been 


THE  SECOND  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA  23 

the  literary  form  peculiarly  fitted  for  a  restless,  observant,  sci 
entific  age. 

The  influence  of  Dickens,  who  died  in  1870,  the  opening  year 
of  the  period,  cannot  be  lightly  passed  over.  It  had  been  his 
task  in  the  middle  years  of  the  century  to  democratise  literature, 
and  to  create  a  reading  public  as  Addison  had  done  a  century 
earlier,  but  Addison 's  public  was  London,  the  London  that  break 
fasted  late  and  went  to  the  coffee  house.  Dickens  created  a  read 
ing  public  out  of  those  who  had  never  read  books  before,  and  the 
greater  part  of  it  was  in  America.  His  social  novels  with  their 
break  from  all  the  conventions  of  fiction,  their  bold,  free  charac 
terization,  their  dialect  and  their  rollicking  humor  and  their 
plentiful  sentiment,  were  peculiarly  fitted  for  appreciation  in 
the  new  after-the-war  atmosphere  of  the  new  land.  Harte  freely 
acknowledged  his  debt  to  him  and  at  his  death  laid  a  "spray  of 
Western  pine"  on  his  grave.  The  grotesque  characters  of  the 
Dickens  novels  were  not  more  grotesque  than  the  actual  inhabit 
ants  of  the  wild  mining  towns  of  the  Sierras  or  the  isolated 
mountain  hamlets  of  the  South,  or  of  many  out-of-the-way  dis 
tricts  even  in  New  England.  The  great  revival  of  interest  in 
Dickens  brought  about  by  his  death  precipitated  the  first  wave! 
of  local  color  novels — the  earliest  work  of  Harte  and  Eggleston 
and  Stockton  and  the  author  of  Cape  Cod  Folks. 

This  first  wave  of  Dickens-inspired  work,  however,  soon  ex 
pended  itself,  and  it  was  followed  by  another  wave  of  fiction  even 
more  significant.  In  the  first  process  of  rediscovering  America, 
Harte,  perhaps,  or  Clemens,  or  Cable,  stumbled  upon  a  tremen 
dous  fact  which  was  destined  to  add  real  classics  to  American  lit 
erature  :  America  was  full  of  border  lands  where  the  old  regime 
had  yielded  to  the  new,  and  where  indeed  there  was  a  true  at 
mosphere  of  romance.  The  result  was  a  type  of  fiction  that  was 
neither  romantic  nor  realistic,  but  a  blending  of  both  methods, 
a  romanticism  of  atmosphere  and  a  realism  of  truth  to  the  actual 
conditions  and  characters  involved. 

This  condition  worked  itself  out  in  a  literary  form  that  is  seenf 
now  to  be  the  most  distinctive  product  of  the  period.  The  era' 
may  as  truly  be  called  the  era  of  the  short  story  as  the  Elizabethan  j 
period  may  be  called  the  era  of  the  drama  and  the  early  eighteenth 
century  the  era  of  the  prose  essay.  The  local  color  school  which  f 
exploited  the  new-found  nooks  and  corners  of  the  West  and! 


24  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

South  did  its  work  almost  wholly  by  means  of  this  highly  wrought 
and  concentrated  literary  form.  Not  half  a  dozen  novelists  of 
the  period  have  worked  exclusively  in  the  novel  and  romance 
forms  of  the  mid-century  type.  A  group  of  writers,  including 
Harte,  Clemens,  Cable,  Mrs.  Cooke,  Miss  Jewett,  Mrs.  Wilkins- 
Freeman,  Miss  Brown,  Miss  Murfree,  Harris,  R.  M.  Johnston, 
Page,  Stockton,  Bierce,  Garland,  Miss  King,  Miss  French,  Miss 
"vYoolson,  Deming,  Bunner,  Aldrich,  have  together  created  what 
is  perhaps  the  best  body  of  short  stories  in  any  language. 

The  period  at  its  end  tended  to  become  journalistic.  The  enor 
mous  demand  for  fiction  by  the  magazines  and  by  the  more 
ephemeral  journals  produced  a  great  mass  of  hastily  written  and 
often  ill  considered  work,  but  on  the  whole  the  literary  quality 
of  the  fiction  of  the  whole  period,  especially  the  short  stories,  has 
been  high.  Never  has  there  been  in  any  era  so  vast  a  flood  of 
books  and  reading,  and  it  may  also  be  said  that  never  before  has 
there  been  so  high  im  average  of  literary  workmanship. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   LAUGHTER  OF   THE   WEST 

American  literature  from  the  first  has  been  rich  in  humor.l 
The  incongruities  of  the  new  world — the  picturesque  gathering 
of  peoples  like  the  Puritans,  the  Indians,  the  cavaliers,  the  Dutch, 
the  negroes  and  the  later  immigrants ;  the  makeshifts  of  the  fron 
tier,  the  vastness  and  the  richness  of  the  land,  the  leveling  effects 
of  democracy,  the  freedom  of  life,  and  the  independence  of  spirit 
— all  have  tended  to  produce  a  laughing  people.  The  first  really^ 
American  book,  Irving 's  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York, 
was  a  broadly  humorous  production.  The  mid  period  of  the! 
nineteenth  century  was  remarkably  rich  in  humor.  One  has  only< 
to  mention  Paulding  and  Holmes  and  Saxe  and  Lowell  and  Seba 
Smith  and  B.  P.  Shillaber.  Yet  despite  these  names  and  dozens 
of  others  almost  equally  deserving,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that 
until  the  Civil  War  period  opened  there  had  been  no  school  of 
distinctly  American  humorists,  original  and  nation-wide.  The 
production  had  been  sporadic  and  provincial,  and  it  had  been  read 
by  small  circles.  The  most  of  it  could  be  traced  to  older  proto 
types  :  Hood,  Thackeray,  Lamb,  Douglas  Jerrold,  Dickens.  The 
humor  of  America,  "new  birth  of  our  new  soil,"  had  been  dis 
covered,  but  as  yet  it  had  had  no  national  recognition  and  no 
great  representative. 

As  late  as  1866,  a  reviewer  of  "Artemus  Ward"  in  the  North 
American  Review,  published  then  in  Boston,  complained  that 
humor  in  America  had  been  a  local  product  and  that  it  had  been 
largely  imitative.  It  was  time,  he  declared,  for  a  new  school  of 
humorists  who  should  be  original  in  their  methods  and  national 
in  their  scope.  "They  must  not  aim  at  copying  anything;  they 
should  take  a  new  form.  .  .  .  Let  them  seek  to  embody  the  wit 
and  humor  of  all  parts  of  the  country,  not  only  of  one  city  where 
their  paper  is  published ;  let  them  force  Portland  to  disgorge  '' 
her  Jack  Downings  and  New  York  her  Orpheus  C,  Kerrs,  for  the 

25 


26  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

benefit  of  all.  Let  them  form  a  nucleus  which  will  draw  to 
all  tin-  waggery  and  wit  of  America."1  It  was  the  call 
of  tin-  IK  \\  national  spirit,  and  as  if  in  reply  there  arose  the  new 
school — uncolleged  for  the  most  part,  untrained  by  books,  fresh, 
joyous,  rxtravagant  in  its  bursting  young  life — the  first  voice  of 
tin-  new  era. 

The  group  was  born  during  the  thirties  and  early  forties,  that 
second  seedtime  of  American  literature.  Their  birth  dates  fall 
within  a  period  of  ten  years: 

!  1833.  David  Ross  Locke,  ''Petroleum  V.  Nasby." 

f  1834.  Charles  Farrar  Browne,  "Artemus  Ward." 

1834.  Charles  Henry  Webb,  "John  Paul." 

I  1835.  Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens,  "Mark  Twain." 

1836.  Robert  Henry  Newell,  "Orpheus  C.  Kerr." 

1839.  Melvin  DeLancy  Landon,  "Eli  Perkins." 

1841.  Thomas  Nast. 

1841.  Charles  Heber  Clark,  "Max  Adler." 

1841.  James  Montgomery  Bailey, ' '  The  Danbury  News  Man. '  ' 

1841.  Alexander  Edwin  Sweet. 

1842.  Charles  Bertrand  Lewis,  "M.  Quad." 

To  the  school  also  belonged  several  who  were  born  outside  of 
\  this  magic  ten  years.  There  were  Henry  Wheeler  Shaw,  "Josh 
Billings,"  born  in  1818;  and  Charles  Henry  Smith,  "Bill  Arp," 
born  in  1823.  At  least  three  younger  members  must  not  be  omit- 
t.-.h  Robert  Jones  Burdette,  1844;  Edgar  Wilson  Nye,  "Bill 
Nye,"  1850;  and  Opie  Read,  1852. 


In  a  broad  way  the  school  was  a  product  of  the  Civil  War. 
American  humor  had  been  an  evolution  of  slow  growth,  and  the 
war  precipitated  it.  The  election  of  Lincoln  in  1860  was  the 
beginning.  Here  was  a  man  of  the  new  West  who  had  worked 
on  flatboats  on  the  Ohio,  who  had  served  as  a  soldier  in  a  back 
woods  troop,  who  had  ridden  for  years  on  a  Western  circuit,  and 
in  rough  and  ready  political  campaigns  had  withstood  the  heck 
ling  of  men  who  had  fought  barehanded  with  the  frontier  and 
had  won.  The  saddest  man  in  American  history,  he  stands  as 

I  Vol.  102:580. 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  27 

one  of  the  greatest  of  American  humorists.  His  laughter  rings 
through  the  whole  period  of  the  war,  man  of  sorrows  though  he 
was,  and  it  was  the  Western  laughter  heard  until  now  only  along 
the  great  rivers  and  the  frontier  and  the  gold  coast  of  the  Pacific. 
He  had  learned  it  from  contact  with  elemental  men,  men  who 
passed  for  precisely  what  they  were,  men  who  were  measured 
solely  by  the  iron  rule  of  what  they  could  do;  self-reliant  men, 
healthy,  huge-bodied,  deep-lunged  men  to  whom  life  was  a  joy. 
The  humor  that  he  brought  to  the  East  was  nothing  new  in  Amer 
ica,  but  the  significant  thing  is  that  for  the  first  time  it  was  placed 
in  the  limelight.  A  peculiar  combination  it  was,  half  shrewd 
wisdom,  "hoss  sense,"  as  "Josh  Billings"  called  it,  the  rest 
characterization  which  exposed  as  with  a  knife-cut  the  inner  life 
as  well  as  the  outer,  whimsical  overstatement  and  understatement, 
droll  incongruities  told  with  all  seriousness,  and  an  irreverence 
born  of  the  all-leveling  democracy  of  the  frontier. 

"It  was  Lincoln's  opinion  that  the  finest  wit  and  humor, 
the  best  jokes  and  anecdotes,  emanated  from  the  lower  orders  of 
the  country  people,"2  and  in  this  judgment  he  pointed  out  the 
very  heart  of  the  new  literature  that  was  germinating  about  him. 
Such  life  is  genuine;  it  rests  upon  the  foundations  of  nature 
itself.  Lincoln,  like  the  man  of  the  new  West  that  he  was,  de 
lighted  not  so  much  in  books  as  in  actual  contact  with  life. 
"Riding  the  circuit  for  many  years  and  stopping  at  country 
taverns  where  were  gathered  the  lawyers,  jurymen,  witnesses, 
and  clients,  they  would  sit  up  all  night  narrating  to  each  other 
their  life  adventures;  and  the  things  which  happened  to  an 
original  people,  in  a  new  country,  surrounded  by  novel  conditions, 
and  told  with  the  descriptive  power  and  exaggeration  which 
characterized  such  men,  supplied  him  with  an  exhaustless  fund 
of  anecdotes  which  could  be  made  applicable  for  enforcing  or 
refuting  an  argument  better  than  all  the  invented  stories  of  the 
world."3 

It  was  the  new  humor  of  the  West  for  the  first  time  shown  to 
the  whole  world.  Lincoln,  the  man  of  the  West,  had  met  the 
polished  East  in  the  person  of  Douglas  and  had  triumphed 
through  very  genuineness,  and  now  he  stood  in  the  limelight 
of  the  Presidency,  transacting  the  nation's  business  with  anec- 

2Lamon's  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  480. 

3  Chauncey  M.  Depew,  quoted  in  Hapgood's  Abraham  Lincoln,  118. 


28  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

dotes  from  the  frontier  circuits,  meeting  hostile  critics  with 
sluvwd  border  philosophy,  and  reading  aloud  with  unction,  while 
battles  were  raging  or  election  returns  were  in  doubt,  from 
"Artemus  Ward,"  or  ''Petroleum  Vesuvius  Nasby,"  or  The 
Flush  Times  of  Alabama  and  Mississippi — favorites  of  his  be- 
they  too  were  genuine,  excerpts  not  from  books  but  from 
life  itself. 

II 

Glimpses  there  already  had  been  of  the  new  humor  of  the 
West.  George  W.  Harris  (1814-1868),  steamboat  captain  on 
the  Tennessee  River,  had  created  that  true  child  of  the  West, 
"Sut  Lovengood";  Augustus  B.  Longstreet  (1790-1870)  in 
Georgia  Scenes  had  drawn  inimitable  sketches  of  the  rude  life  of 
his  region;  and  Joseph  G.  Baldwin  (1815-1864),  like  Lincoln, 
himself  a  lawyer  who  had  learned  much  on  his  frontier  circuit, 
in  his  Flush  Times  had  traced  the  evolution  of  a  country  barris 
ter  in  a  manner  that  even  now,  despite  its  echoes  of  Dickens, 
makes  the  book  a  notable  one. 

But  the  greatest  of  them  all,  the  real  father  of  the  new  school 
of  humorists,  the  man  who  gave  the  East  the  first  glimpse  of  the 
California  type  of  humor,  was  George  Horatio  Derby  (1823- 
1861),  whose  sketches  over  the  signature  "John  Phoenix"  began 
to  appear  in  the  early  fifties.  Undoubtedly  it  would  amazo 
Derby  could  he  return  and  read  of  himself  as  the  father  of  the 
later  school  of  humor.  With  him  literary  comedy  was  simply  a 
means  now  and  then  of  relaxation  from  the  burdens  of  a  strenu 
ous  profession.  He  had  been  graduated  from  West  Point  in 
1846,  had  fought  in  the  Mexican  War,  and  later  as  an  engineer 
had  been  entrusted  by  the  government  with  important  surveys 
and  explorations  in  the  far  West  and  later  in  Florida,  where  he 
died  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight  of  sunstroke.  He  was  burdened 
all  his  life  with  heavy  responsibilities  and  exacting  demands 
upon  his  energies.  He  had  little  time  for  books,  and  his  writings, 
what  few  he  produced,  were  the  result  wholly  of  his  own  observa 
tions  upon  the  picturesque  life  that  he  found  about  him  in  the 
West. 

In  his  Phceniriana,  published  in  1855,  we  find  nearly  all  of  the 
elements  that  were  to  be  used  by  the  new  school  of  humorists. 
First,  there  is  the  solemn  protestation  of  truthfulness  followed 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  29 

by  the  story  that  on  the  face  of  it  is  impossible.  "If  the  son 
of  the  reader  .  .  .  should  look  confidingly  into  his  parent's  face, 
and  inquire — 'Is  that  true,  Papa?'  reply,  oh,  reader,  unhesi 
tatingly — 'My  son,  it  is.'  "  To  make  the  story  still  more  plaus 
ible  he  quotes  "Truthful  James/'  He  may  then  proceed  with  a 
story  like  this : 

He  glanced  over  the  first  column  [of  Phoenix's  Pictorial]  when  he 
was  observed  to  grow  black  in  the  face.  A  bystander  hastened  to  seize 
him  by  the  collar,  but  it  was  too  late.  Exploding  with  mirth,  he  was 
scattered  into  a  thousand  fragments,  one  of  which  striking  him  prob 
ably  inflicting  some  fatal  injury,  as  he  immediately  expired,  having1 
barely  time  to  remove  his  hat,  and  say  in  a  feeble  voice,  "Give  this  to 
Phoenix."  A  large  black  tooth  lies  on  the  table  before  us,  driven 
through  the  side  of  the  office  with  fearful  violence  at  the  time  of  the 
explosion.  We  have  enclosed  it  to  his  widow  with  a  letter  of  con 
dolence. 

"Truthful  James" — we  think  of  Bret  Harte,  and  we  think  of 
him  again  after  passages  like  this :  ' '  An  old  villain  with  a  bald 
head  and  spectacles  punched  me  in  the  abdomen;  I  lost  my 
breath,  closed  my  eyes,  and  remembered  nothing  further." 

Derby  was  the  first  conspicuous  writer  to  use  grotesque  ex 
aggerations  deliberately  and  freely  as  a  provocative  of  laughter. 
Irving  and  many  others  had  made  use  of  it,  but  in  Phwmxiana 
it  amounts  to  a  mannerism.  He  tells  the  most  astonishing  im 
possibilities  and  then  naively  adds :  ' '  It  is  possible  that  the  cir 
cumstances  may  have  become  slightly  exaggerated.  Of  course, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  truth  of  the  main  incidents."  In 
true  California  style  he  makes  use  often  of  specific  exaggera 
tion.  Two  men  trip  over  a  rope  in  the  dark  ' '  and  then  followed 
what,  if  published,  would  make  two  closely  printed  royal  octavo 
pages  of  profanity."  So  popular  was  the  Phrenix  Herald  that 
"we  have  now  seven  hundred  and  eighty-two  Indians  employed 
night  and  day  in  mixing  adobe  for  the  type  molds. ' ' 

The  second  characteristic  of  Derby's  humor  was  its  irreverence. 
To  him  nothing  was  sacred.  The  first  practical  joker,  he  averred, 
was  Judas  Iscariot :  he  sold  his  Master.  Arcturus,  he  observed, 
was  a  star  "which  many  years  since  a  person  named  Job  was 
asked  if  he  could  guide,  and  he  acknowledged  he  could  n  't  do  it.  * ' 
"David  was  a  Jew — hence,  the  'Harp  of  David'  was  a  Jew's- 
harp." 


30  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

He  delights  in  the  device  of  euphemistic  statement  used  so 
fivrly  by  later  humorists.  The  father  of  Joseph  Bowers,  he 
explains,  was  engaged  in  business  as  a  malefactor  in  western 
New  York,  but  was  annoyed  greatly  by  the  prejudices  of  the 
bigoted  settlers.  He  emigrated  suddenly,  however,  with  such 
precipitation  in  fact  that  "he  took  nothing  with  him  of  his  large 
property  but  a  single  shirt,  which  he  happened  to  have  about 
him  at  the  time  he  formed  his  resolution."  Finally  he  "ended 
his  career  of  usefulness  by  falling  from  a  cart  in  which  he  had 
been  standing,  addressing  a  numerous  audience,  and  in  which 
fall  he  unfortunately  broke  his  neck." 

He  abounds  in  true  Yankee  aphorisms — "when  a  man  is  going 
down,  everybody  lends  him  a  kick,"  "Where  impudence  is  wit, 
't  is  folly  to  reply."  He  uses  unexpected  comparisons  and  whim 
sical  «on  sequiturs:  he  sails  on  "a  Napa  steam  packet  of  four 
cat-power";  "the  wind  blew,"  he  declared,  "like  well-watered 
roses."  R.  W.  Emerson,  he  was  informed,  while  traveling 
in  upper  Norway,  "on  the  21st  of  June,  1836,  distinctly  saw  the 
sun  in  all  its  majesty  shining  at  midnight ! — in  fact,  all  night. 
Emerson  is  not  what  you  would  call  a  superstitious  man,  by  any 
means — but,  he  left." 

It  was  Derby  who  wrote  the  first  Pike  County  ballad.  "Sud 
denly  we  hear  approaching  a  train  from  Pike  County,  consisting 
of  seven  families,  with  forty-six  wagons,  each  drawn  by  thirteen 
oxen."  Elsewhere  he  has  described  the  typical  "Pike":  "His 
hair  is  light,  not  a  'sable  silvered/  but  a  ycllcr,  gilded;  you  can 
see  some  of  it  sticking  out  of  the  top  of  his  hat;  his  costume  is 
the  national  costume  of  Arkansas,  coat,  waistcoat,  and  panta 
loons  of  homespun  cloth,  dyed  a  brownish  yellow,  with  a  decoc 
tion  of  the  bitter  barked  butternut — a  pleasing  alliteration;  his 
countenance  presents  a  determined,  combined  with  a  sanctimoni 
ous  expression."  "Now  rises  o'er  the  plains  in  mellifluous  ac 
cents,  the  grand  Pike  County  Chorus : 

Oh,  we  '11  soon  be  thar 
In  the  land  of  gold, 
Through  the  forest  old, 
O'er  the  mounting  cold, 
With  spirits  bold— 
Oh,  we  come,  we  come, 
And  we  '11  soon  be  thar. 

Gee  up,  Bolly!  whoo,  up,  whoo  haw! 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  31 

Not  much  was  added  to  Western  humor  after  Derby.  Mark 
Twain's  earliest  manner  had  much  in  it  that  smacks  of  "Phoe 
nix."  The  chapters  entitled,  * ''Phoenix  Takes  an  Affectionate 
Leave  of  San  Francisco,"  "Phoenix  is  on  the  Sea,"  and  "Phoe 
nix  in  San  Diego"  might  have  been  taken  from  Roughing  It. 
Just  as  truly  the  chapters,  ' '  Inauguration  of  the  New  Collector ' ' 
and  "Return  of  the  Collector,"  "Thrilling  and  Frantic  Excite 
ment  Among  Office  Seekers"  might  have  been  written  by  Or 
pheus  C.  Kerr.  Yet  despite  such  similarities,  the  later  school  did 
not  necessarily  filch  from  ' '  Phoenix ' ' :  they  learned  their  art  as 
he  had  learned  it  from  contact  with  the  new  West.  All  drew 
from  the  same  model. 

Ill 

For  the  new  humor,  which  was  to  be  the  first  product  of  the 
new  period  in  American  literature,  was  Western  humor  of  the 
"John  Phoenix"  type.  It  came  from  three  great  seed  places :» 
the  Mississippi  and  its  rivers,  the  California  coast,  and,  later, 
the  camps  of  the  Civil  War.  It  was  the  humor  of  the  gatherings 
of  men  under  primitive  conditions.  It  was  often  crude  and 
coarse.  It  was  elemental  and  boisterous  and  often  profane.  To 
the  older  school  of  poets  and  scholars  in  the  East  it  seemed,  as  it 
began  to  fill  all  the  papers  and  creep  even  into  the  standard 
magazines,  like  a  veritable  renaissance  of  vulgarity.  "The 
worlds  before  and  after  the  Deluge  were  not  more  different  than 
our  republics  of  letters  before  and  after  the  war, ' ' 4  wrote  Sted- 1 
man  to  William  Winter  in  1873,  and  the  same  year  he  wrote  to 
Taylor  in  Europe,  "The  whole  country,  owing  to  contagion 
of  our  American  newspaper  ' exchange '  system,  is  flooded,  del-, 
uged,  swamped,  beneath  a  muddy  tide  of  slang,  vulgarity,  inartis 
tic  bathers  [sic],  impertinence,  and  buffoonery  that  is  not  wit."  5 

Many  of  the  new  humorists  had  been  born  in  the  East,  but  all  of 
them  had  been  drilled  either  in  the  rough  school  of  the  West  or 
in  the  armies  during  the  war.  Shaw  had  been  a  deckhand  on 
an  Ohio  River  steamer;  Browne  had  been  a  tramp  printer  both 
in  the  East  and  the  West,  and  had  lived  for  a  time  in  California ; 
Clemens  had  been  tramp  printer,  pilot  on  the  Mississippi,  and 
for  five  years  miner  and  newspaper  man  on  the  Western  coast; 

*  Life  and  Letters  of  E.  C.  Stedman,  i:   466. 
5 Ibid.,  i:  477. 


32  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Webb  and  Nye  and  Newell  had  seen  life  in  California;  Locke 
had  edited  country  papers  in  northern  Ohio,  and  C.  H.  Smith, 
Landon,  Bailey,  Sweet,  Lewis,  and  Burdette  had  been  soldiers 
in  the  Civil  War.  All  of  them  had  been  thrown  together  with 
mm  under  rimimstances  that  had  stripped  them  and  the  life 
about  them  of  all  the  veneer  of  convention  and  class  distinction. 

One  thing  the  group  had  in  common:  they  were  newspaper 
men;  most  of  them  had  worked  at  the  case;  all  of  them  at  one 
time  or  another  were  connected  with  the  press.  The  new  humor 
was  scattered  by  the  newspapers  that  after  the  war  spread  them 
selves  in  incredible  numbers  over  America.  The  exchange  sys 
tem,  complained  of  by  Stedman,  became  nation  wide.  The  good 
things  of  one  paper  were  seized  upon  by  the  others  and  sown 
broadcast.  Humorous  departments  became  more  and  more  com 
mon,  until  staid  old  papers  like  the  Boston  Advertiser  had  yielded 
to  the  popular  demand.  The  alarm  voiced  by  Stedman  in  his 
letter  to  Taylor  was  taken  up  by  the  more  conservative  maga 
zines.  The  humor  of  to-day  is  written  for  the  multitude,  com 
plained  the  ponderous  old  North  American  Review,  "that  un 
counted  host  which  reads  for  its  romance  The  Ledger  and  The 
Pirate  of  the  Gulf.  Common  schools  make  us  a  nation  of  read 
ers.  But  common  schools,  alas!  do  little  to  inculcate  taste  or 
discrimination  in  the  choice  of  reading.  The  mass  of  the  com 
munity  has  a  coarse  digestion.  ...  It  likes  horse-laughs.'* 6  But 
it  is  useless  to  combat  the  spirit  of  the  age. 

The  wave  rolled  on  until  it  reached  its  height  in  the  mid  sev 
enties.  From  journals  with  an  incidental  humorous  column 
there  had  arisen  the  newspaper  that  was  quoted  everywhere  and 
enormously  subscribed  for  solely  because  of  the  funny  man  in 
charge.  The  Danbury  News,  the  local  paper  of  a  small  Connecti 
cut  city,  swelled  its  subscription  list  to  40,000  because  of  its 
editor  Bailey.  The  vogue  of  such  a  paper  was  not  long.  At 
different  periods  there  arose  and  nourished  and  declined  "Nas- 
by  V  Toledo  Blade,  "Lickshingle's"  Oil  City  Derrick,  Burdette 's 
Burlington  Hawkey e,  "M.  Quad's"  Detroit  Free  Press,  Peck's 
NM/I,  Sweet's  Texas  Sif tings,  Read's  Arkansaw  Traveller,  and 
many  others. 

The  greater  part  of  this  newspaper  humor  was  as  fleeting  as 
the  flying  leaves  upon  which  it  was  printed.  It  has  disappeared 

•Vol.    102:588. 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  33 

never  to  be  regathered.  Even  the  small  proportion  of  it  that 
was  put  by  its  authors  into  book  form  has  fared  little  better. 
From  all  the  host  of  literary  comedians  that  so  shook  the  period 
with  laughter  not  over  four  have  taken  anything  even  approach 
ing  a  permanent  place.  These  four  are  Browne,  Locke,  Nast, 
and  Shaw. 

IV 

Charles  Farrar  Browne,  "Artemus  Ward,"  the  first  of  the 
group  to  gain  recognition,   was  born  of  Puritan  ancestry  in 
Waterville,  Maine,  in  1834.    Forced  by  the  death  of  his  father 
in  1847  to  rely  upon  his  own  efforts  for  support,  he  became  a 
typesetter  on  the  Skowhegan  Clarion,  and  later,  after  a  wander-! 
ing  career  from  office  to  office,  served  for  three  years  in  Boston 
as  a  compositor  for  Snow  and  Wilder,  the  publishers  of  Mrs.- 
Partington's  Carpet  Bag.     His  connection  with  Shillaber,  the; 
editor  of  this  paper,  turned  his  mind  to  humorous  composition,  j 
but  it  was  not  until  after  his  second  wander  period  in  the  South  i 
and  West  that  he  discovered  the  real  bent  of  his  powers.     His5 
career  as  a  humorist  may  be  said  to  have  begun  in  1857,  when,! 
after  two  years  at  Toledo,  Ohio,  he  was  called  to  the  local  editor 
ship  of  the  Cleveland  Plain-Dealer  and  given  freedom  to  inject 
into  the  dry  news  columns  all  the  life  and  fun  that  he  chose.; 
He  began  now  to  write  articles  purporting  to  describe  the  strug 
gles  and  experiences  of  one  ' '  Artemus  Ward, ' '  an  itinerant  show 
man  who  was  as  full  of  homely  wisdom  and  experience  as  he  was 
lacking  in  book  learning  and  refinement.     The  letters  instantly 
struck  a  popular  chord ;  they  were  copied  widely.     After  serving 
three  years  on  the  Plain-Dealer  their  author  was  called  to  New 
York  to  become  the  editor  of  the  brilliant  but  ill-starred  comic, 
magazine,   Vanity  Fair.     The  following  year,   1861,   he  began 
to  lecture,  and  in  1863  and  1864  he  made  a  six-months'  lecture1 
tour  of  the  Pacific  Coast.     The  free,  picturesque  life  of  the  new 
cities  and  the  wild  camps  delighted  him.     In  Virginia  City  h0 
spent  three  marvelous  weeks  with  Mark  Twain,  then  a  reporter 
on  the  local  paper.     Returning  across  the  Plains,  he  visited  the1 
Mormons.    The  trip  was  the  graduate  course  of  the  young  hu 
morist.    Not  until  after  his  California  training  was  he  completely 
in  command  of  his  art.    Then  in  1866  at  the  height  of  his  powers] 
he  went  to  London,  where  his  success  was  instant  and  unprece-i 


34  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

drntrd.  lie  was  made  an  editor  of  Punch,  he  was  discussed 
in  all  quarters,  and  his  lectures  night  by  night  were  attended  by 
,  n.w.is  I '.ut  the  end  was  near.  He  died  of  quick  consumption 
March  6,  1867. 

The  secret  of  Browne's  success  as  a  humorist  lay,  first  of  all, 
in  the  droll  personality  of  the  man.  It  was  the  opinion  of 
Haw.  is.  who  heard  him  in  London,  that  his  "bursts  of  quaint 
humor  could  only  live  at  all  in  that  subtle  atmosphere  which 
Artcmus  Ward's  presence  created,  and  in  which  alone  he  was 
able  to  operate. "  T  He  made  use  of  all  the  humorous  devices  of 
his  favorite,  John  Phoenix,  and  to  them  he  added  what  may  be 
called  the  American  manner  of  delivering  humor:  the  setting 
forth  with  perfect  gravity  and  even  mournfulness  his  most  telling 
jokes  and  then  the  assuming  of  a  surprised  or  even  a  grieved  ex 
pression  when  the  audience  laughed. 

Furthermore,  to  Phoenix's  devices  he  added  cacography,  the 
device  of  deliberate  misspelling  so  much  used  by  later  humorists. 
He  seems  to  have  adopted  it  spontaneously  as  a  matter  of  course. 
He  was  to  take  the  character  of  an  ignorant  showman  and  nat 
urally  he  must  write  as  such  a  man  would  write.  The  misspell 
ing  of  "Artemus  Ward"  has  character  in  it.  In  his  hands  it 
becomes  an  art,  and  an  art  that  helps  make  vivid  the  personality 
of  the  old  showman.  "Artemus  Ward"  is  not  a  mere  Dickens 
gargoyle:  he  is  alive.  Witness  this: 

If  you  say  anything  about  my  show  say  my  snaiks  is  as  harmliss 
as  the  new  born  Babe. 

In  the  Brite  Lexington  of  yooth,  thar  aint  no  sich  word  as  fale. 
"Too  troo,  too  troo !"  I  answered ;  "it 's  a  scanderlis  fact." 

He  is  not  at  all  consistent  in  his  spelling;  he  is  as  prodigal  as 
nature  and  as  careless.  The  mere  uninspired  cacographist  mis 
spells  every  word  that  it  is  possible  to  misspell,  but  Browne  picks 
only  key  words.  His  art  is  displayed  as  much  in  the  words  he 
does  not  change  as  in  those  with  which  he  makes  free.  He  coins 
new  words  with  telling  effect.  Of  his  wife  he  observes:  "As 
a  flap-jackist  she  has  no  equal.  She  wears  the  belt."  And  he 
makes  free  with  older  words  in  a  way  that  is  peculiarly  his  own  : 
"Why  this  thusness." 

The  third  element  he  added  to  the  humor  of  Phoenix  was  s 

i  Haweis's  America*  Humorists,  122. 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  35 

naive  drollery,  a  whimsical  incongruity,  that  was  peculiar  to 
himself.  He  caught  it  from  no  one,  and  he  imparted  it  to  no 
one.  It  can  be  described  only  as  "Artemus  Ward."  It  lives 
even  apart  from  his  presence  in  much  of  the  writing  that  he  has 
left  behind  him.  It  is  as  useless  to  try  to  analyze  it  as  it  were 
to  describe  the  odor  of  apples.  One  can  only  quote  examples,  as 
for  instance  this  from  his  adventure  "Among  the  Free  Lovers": 

The  exsentric  female  then  clutched  me  frantically  by  the  arm  and 
hollered : 

"You  air  mine,  0  you  air  mine !" 

"Scacely,"  I  sed,  endeverin  to  git  loose  from  her.  But  she  clung  to 
me  and  sed: 

"You  air  my  Affinerty !" 

"What  upon  arth  is  that?"  I  shouted. 

"Dost  thou  not  know?" 

"No,  I  dostent !" 

"Listin  man  &  I  '11  tell  ye !"  sed  the  strange  female ;  "for  years  I  hav 
yearned  for  thee.  I  knowd  thou  wast  in  the  world  sumwhares,  tho  I 
did  n't  know  whare.  My  hart  sed  he  would  cum  and  I  took  courage. 
He  has  cum — he  's  here — you  air  him — you  air  my  Affinerty !  0  't  is 
too  mutch!  too  mutch!"  and  she  sobbed  agin. 

"Yes,"  I  anserd,  "I  think  it  is  a  darn  sight  too  mutch!" 

"Hast  thou  not  yearned  for  me?"  she  yelled,  ringin  her  hands  like 
a  female  play  acter. 

"Not  a  yearn!"  I  bellerd  at  the  top  of  my  voice,  throwin  her  away 
from  me. 

Whatever  we  may  think  of  the  quality  of  this,  we  must  agree 
that  it  is  original.  If  there  is  any  trace  of  a  prototype  it  is 
Dickens.  The  characters  and  the  situation  are  heightened  to 
grotesqueness,  yet  one  must  be  abnormally  keen  in  palate  to 
detect  any  Dickens  flavor  in  the  style.  It  is  "Artemus  Ward" 
and  only  "Artemus  Ward."  All  that  he  wrote  he  drew  from 
life  itself  and  from  American  life.  It  is  as  redolent  of  the  new 
world  as  the  bison  or  the  Indian.  He  wrote  only  what  had  passed 
under  his  eye  and  he  wrote  only  of  persons.  Unlike  Mark 
Twain,  he  could  cross  the  continent  in  the  wild  days  of  '64  and 
see  nothing  apparently  but  humanity. 

The  world  of  Charles  Farrar  Browne  was  the  child's  world 
of  wonder.  He  was  a  case,  as  it  were,  of  arrested  development,  a 
fragment  of  the  myth-making  age  brought  into  the  nineteenth 
century.  His  "Artemus  Ward"  was  a  latter-day  knight-errant 
traveling  from  adventure  to  adventure.  The  world  to  him, 


36  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

mn  as  to  a  child,  was  full  of  strange,  half  mythical  beings: 
Shakers,  Spiritualists,  Octoroons,  Free  Lovers,  Mormons,  Cham 
pions  of  Woman's  Rights,  Office  Seekers,  ' ' Seseshers, "  Princes, 
and  heirs  to  Empires.  The  hero  is  tempted,  imposed  upon,  as 
saulted,  but  he  always  comes  out  first  best  and  turns  with  copious 
advice  which  is  always  moral  and  sensible  and  appropriate.  To 
the  woman  who  had  claimed  him  as  her  affinity  he  speaks  thus : 

I  'm  a  lawabiding  man,  and  bleeve  in  good,  old-fashioned  institutions. 
1  am  marrid  &  my  offsprings  resemble  me,  if  I  am  a  showman !  I 
think  your  Affinity  bizniss  is  cussed  noncents,  besides  bein  outrajusly 
wiekeo.  Why  don't  you  behave  desunt  like  other  folks?  Go  to  work 
and  earn  a  honist  livin  and  not  stay  round  here  in  this  lazy,  shiftless 
way.  pizenin  the  moral  atmosphere  with  your  pestifrous  idees!  You 
wimin  folks  go  back  to  your  lawful  husbands,  if  you've  got  any,  and 
take  orf  them  skanderlous  gownds  and  trowsis,  and  dress  respectful 
like  other  wimin.  You  men  folks,  cut  orf  them  pirattercal  wiskers, 
burn  up  them  infurnel  pamplits,  put  ium  weskuts  on,  go  to  work 
choppin  wood,  splittin  fence  rales,  or  tillin  the  sile.  I  pored  4th.  my 
indignashun  in  this  way  till  I  got  out  of  breth,  when  I  stopt. 

This  is  not  "Artemus  Ward"  talking;  it  is  Charles  Farrar 
Browne,  and  it  is  Browne  who  rebukes  the  Shakers,  the  Spirit 
ualists,  the  Committee  from  the  Woman's  Rights  Association, 
and  the  office-seekers  about  Lincoln,  who  gives  advice  to  the 
Prince  of  Wales  and  Prince  Napoleon,  who  stands  by  the  flag 
when  the  mob  destroys  his  show  down  among  the  "Seseshers,'7 
and  who  later  addresses  the  draft  rioters  at  Baldwinsville. 
Browne  was  indeed  a  moral  showman.  Every  page  of  his  work 
is  free  from  profanity  and  vulgarity.  He  is  never  cheap,  never 
tawdry,  never  unkind  to  anything  save  immorality  and  snobbish 
ness.  His  New  England  ancestry  and  breeding  may  be  felt  in 
all  he  wrote.  At  heart  he  was  a  reformer.  He  once  wrote : 
"Humorous  writers  have  always  done  the  most  toward  helping 
virtue  on  its  pilgrimage,  and  the  truth  has  found  more  aid 
from  them  than  from  all  the  grave  polemists  and  solid  writers 
that  have  ever  spoken  or  written. ' ' 

Beneath  his  kindly,  whimsical  exterior  there  was  a  spirit  that 
could  be  blown  into  an  indignation  as  fierce  even  as  Mark  Twain 's. 
While  he  was  local  editor  of  the  Plain-Dealer  he  burst  out  one 
day  in  this  fiery  editorial : 

A  writer  in  the  Philadelphia  Ledger  has  di<(M.v»'iv.l  that  Edgar  A. 
Poe  was  not  a  man  of  genius.  We  take  it  for  granted  that  the  writer 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  37 

has  never  read  Poe.  His  lot  in  life  was  hard  enough,  God  knows,  and 
it  is  a  pity  the  oyster-house  critics,  snobs,  flunkeys,  and  literary  nincom 
poops  can't  stop  snarling  over  his  grave.  The  biography  of  Poe  by 
Griswold — which  production  for  fiendish  malignity  is  probably  un- 
equaled  in  the  history  of  letters — should,  it  would  seem,  have  sufficed. 
No  stone  marks  the  spot  where  poor  Poe  sleeps,  and  no  friendly  hand 
strews  flowers  upon  his  grave  in  summer-time,  but  countless  thousands, 
all  over  the  world,  will  read  and  ad"mire  his  wildly  beautiful  pages  until 
the  end  of  time.8 

This  knightly  spirit  led  him  to  warfare  upon  everything  that 
was  merely  sentimental  or  insincere.  He  burlesqued  the  gushing 
love  songs  of  the  period,  advertising  in  his  program  to  render 
at  appropriate  intervals  "  Dearest,  Whenest  Thou  Slumberest 
Dostest  Thou  Dreamest  of  Me?"  and  "Dear  Mother,  I  Ve  Come 
Home  to  Die  by  Request. ' '  He  burlesqued  the  sensational  novels 
of  the  day  in  Roberto,  the  Rover,  and  Moses,  the  Sassy.  Only 
once  did  he  ever  read  the  Ledger,  he  avers,  and  that  was  after 
his  first  experience  with  New  England  rum : 

On  takin  the  secund  glass  I  was  seezed  with  a  desire  to  break  winders, 
&  arter  imbibin  the  third  glass  I  knockt  a  small  boy  down,  pickt  his 
pocket  of  a  New  York  Ledger,  and  wildly  commenced  readin  Sylvanus 
Kobb's  last  Tail. 

He  is  still  read  and  still  republished.  There  is  a  perennial 
charm  about  his  work  that  raises  it  above  the  times  that  produced 
it,  and  that  promises  to  make  it  permanent.  His  originality,  his 
unfailing  animal  spirits  which  came  of  the  abounding  life  of  the 
new  America,  his  quaint  characterization  which  has  added  a  new 
figure  to  the  gallery  of  fiction,  his  Americanism,  his  vein  of  kindli 
ness  and  pathos  that  underlies  all  that  he  wrote,  his  indignation 
at  snobbery  and  all  in  the  life  of  his  day  that  was  not  genuine 
and  pure,  and  finally  the  exquisite  pathos  of  his  later  years,  all 
combine  to  make  him  remembered. 


Among  the  literary  progeny  of  "Artemus  Ward"  the  most 
noteworthy,  perhaps,  was  '  *  Petroleum  V.  Nasby, ' '  who  became  so 
familiar  a  figure  during  the  war.  The  creator  of  this  unique 
character  was  David  Ross  Locke,  a  native  of  the  State  of  New 

s  Quoted  by  Kuthrauff  in  "Artemus  Ward  at  Cleveland,"  Scribner's 
Monthly,  16:784. 


38  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

York,  and,  like  Browne,  a  wandering  printer  from  early  boyhood. 
When  the  "  Artemus  Ward"  letters  began  to  appear  in  the  Cleve 
land  Plain-Dealer,  Locke  was  editor  of  the  Bucyrus  Journal,  a 
few  miles  to  the  westward.  Their  success  spurred  him  to  imita 
tion,  but  it  was  not  until  the  firing  upon  Fort  Sumter  that  he 
succeeded  at  all  in  attracting  attention.  Wingert's  Corners,  a 
small  hamlet  in  Crawford  County,  Ohio,  had  petitioned  the  legis 
lature  to  remove  all  negroes  from  the  State.  There  was  a  humor 
ous  element  in  such  a  proposition  from  such  a  source.  Why  not 
give  the  bellicose  little  community  an  appropriate  spokesman,  a 
sort  of  " copperhead "  "Artemus  Ward,"  and  have  him  declare 
it  totally  free  and  independent  of  the  State?  The  result  was  a 
letter  in  the  Findlay  Jeffersonian,  of  which  Locke  was  then  the 
editor,  dated  "Wingert's  Corners,  March  the  21,  1861,"  and 
signed  "Petroleum  V.  Nasby."  The  "Nasby  Letters"  had 
begun.  The  little  Ohio  hamlet  soon  proved  too  small  a  field  for 
the  redoubtable  Democrat,  and  to  give  free  play  to  his  love  of 
slavery  and  untaxed  whisky,  his  hatred  of  "niggers"  and  his 
self-seeking  disloyalty,  he  was  removed  to  "Confedrit  X  Roads 
(wich  is  in  the  Stait  of  Kentucky),"  from  which  imaginary 
center  letters  continued  to  flow  during  the  war  and  the  recon 
struction  era  that  followed. 

No  humorist  ever  struck  a  more  popular  chord.  The  letters 
were  republished  week  by  week  by  the  entire  Northern  press,  and 
they  were  looked  for  by  the  reading  public  as  eagerly  as  if  they 
were  reports  of  battles.  The  soldiers  in  the  Federal  armies  read 
them  with  gusto,  and  Lincoln  and  Chase  considered  them  a  real 
source  of  strength  to  the  Union  cause. 

Like  most  political  satires,  however,  the  letters  do  not  wear 
well.  They  were  too  much  colored  by  their  times.  To-day  the 
atmosphere  of  prejudice  in  which  they  were  written  has  vanished, 
and  the  most  telling  hits  and  timely  jokes  raise  no  smile.  A  gen 
eration  has  arisen  which  must  have  foot-notes  if  it  is  to  read  the 
letters.  We  wonder  now  what  it  was  that  could  have  so  capti 
vated  the  first  readers. 

"Nasby"  has  little  of  "Artemus  Ward's"  whimsical  drollery; 
indeed,  the  old  Democrat  resembles  the  showman,  his  prototype, 
only  in  his  rusticity,  his  ignorance  of  culture,  and  his  defiance  of 
the  laws  of  spelling.  One  is  Launcelot  Gobbo,  the  other  is 
Touchstone;  one  is  a  mere  clown,  the  other  a  true  humorist,  as 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  39 

genuine  as  life  itself  is  genuine.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  clown  to 
be  a  buffoon,  to  imitate  and  to  come  to  grief.  He  essays  all  the 
parts  of  the  acrobats  only  to  roll  ignominiously  in  the  dust.  Then 
to  the  amazement  of  the  beholders  he  makes  a  leap  that  surpasses 
them  all.  "Nasby"  at  one  time  or  another  enters  every  sphere 
of  the  political  life  of  his  day  and  generally  with  small  glory  to 
himself.  Through  "influence"  he  becomes  postmaster  of  "Con- 
fedrit  X  Roads,"  and  through  "influence"  he  loses  his  position. 

The  die  is  cast!  The  guilloteen  hez  fallen!  I  am  no  longer  post 
master  at  Confedrit  X  Roads,  wich  is  in  the  stait  uv  Kentucky.  The 
place  that  knowd  me  wunst  will  know  me  no  more  forever;  the  paper 
wich  Deekin  Pogram  takes  will  be  handed  out  by  a  nigger;  a  nigger 
will  hev  the  openin  uv  letters  addressed  to  parties  residin  hereabouts 
containin  remittances;  a  nigger  will  have  the  riflin  uv  letters  adrest  to 
lottery  managers  and  extractin  the  sweets  therf rom ;  a  nigger  will  be — 
but  I  could  n't  dwell  upon  the  disgustin  theme  no  longer. 

This  is  mere  clownishness,  and  yet  no  type  of  humor  could  have 
been  more  acceptable  to  the  time  that  read  it.  The  Revolu 
tionary  War  had  had  its  "McFingal,"  who  loudly  preached  Tory 
ism  and  as  a  reward  was  beaten  about  and  even  tarred  and  feath 
ered.  Periods  of  strife  and  prejudice  always  demand  a  clown, 
one  who  concentrates  in  a  single  personality  the  evils  of  the  time. 
"Nasby"  stands  for  blatant  copperheadism,  just  as"McFingal" 
stands  for  Toryism,  and  as  a  result  he  delighted  the  multitude. 
His  schemes  and  ideas  and  adventures  were  all  exaggerated,  and 
the  persons  he  dealt  with,  like  President  Johnson  and  his  circle, 
were  heightened  to  the  point  of  caricature.  Magnified  fifty  di 
ameters,  the  evil  or  the  evil  personage,  like  all  things  seen  under 
the  magnifying  glass,  becomes  grotesque  and  startling.  The  peo 
ple  at  first  laugh  and  then  they  cry  out,  ' '  Away  with  this  thing ; 
it  is  unendurable." 

Refinement  is  not  to  be  expected  in  political  satires  that  came 
hot  from  a  period  of  prejudice  and  war,  but  the  coarseness  of  the 
"Nasby"  letters  goes  beyond  the  bounds  of  toleration  even  in 
such  writings.  They  smack  of  the  coarseness  of  the  armies  of 
the  period.  They  reek  with  whisky  until  one  can  almost  smell 
it  as  one  turns  the  pages.  The  uncouth  spelling  simply  adds  to 
the  coarseness ;  it  adds  nothing  to  the  reality  of  the  characteriza 
tion.  There  is  an  impression  constantly  that  the  writer  is  strain 
ing  for  comic  effect.  He  who  is  capable  of  such  diction  as, 


40  AMKKFCAX  LITERATTRE  SINCE  1870 

"They  can  swear  to  each  other's  loyalty,  which  will  reduce  the 
cost  of  evidence  to  a  mere  nominal  sum,"  would  hardly  be  guilty 
of  such  spellings  as  "yeelded,"  * '  pekoolyer, "  and  "vayloo,"  the 
last  standing  for  '  *  value. ' ' 

The  effect  of  the  letters  in  forming  sentiment  in  the  North  at 
critical  periods  was  doubtless  considerable,  but  such  statements 
as  the  much-quoted  one  of  George  S.  Boutwell  at  Cooper  Union 
that  the  fall  of  the  Confederacy  was  due  to  "three  forces — the 
army,  the  navy,  and  the  Nasby  letters" — must  be  taken  with  cau 
tion  as  too  much  colored  by  the  enthusiastic  atmosphere  in  which 
it  was  spoken.  Their  enormous  vogue,  however,  no  one  can 
(jutstion.  East  and  West  became  one  as  they  perused  the  re 
morseless  logic  of  these  patriotic  satires.  Strange  as  it  may  seem 
to-day,  great  numbers  of  the  earlier  readers  had  not  a  suspicion 
that  "Nasby"  of  "Confedrit  X  Roads"  was  not  as  real  a  person 
even  as  "Jeff"  Davis.  According  to  Major  Pond,  "one  meeting 
of  tin-  '1'aithful'  framed  a  resolution  commending  the  fidelity  to 
Democratic  principles  shown  in  the  Nasby  letters,  but  urging 
Mr.  Nasby,  for  the  sake  of  policy,  not  to  be  so  outspoken. "  °  In 
the  presence  of  such  testimony  criticism  must  be  silent.  Realism 
can  have  no  greater  triumph  than  that. 

VI 

Periods  of  prejudice  and  passion  tend  always  to  develop  sati- 
riftft  The  Civil  War  produced  a  whole  school  of  them.  There 
was  "Bill  Arp,"  the  "Nasby"  of  the  South,  philosopher  and 
optimist,  who  did  so  much  to  relieve  Southern  gloom  during  the 
reconstruction  era;  there  was  "Orpheus  C.  Kerr,"  who  made 
ludicrous  the  office-seeking  mania  of  the  times;  and,  greatest  of 
them  all,  including  even  "Nasby,"  there  was  Thomas  Nast,  who 
worked  not  with  pen  but  with  pencil. 

No  sketch  of  American  humor  can  ignore  Nast.  His  art  was 
constructive  and  compelling.  It  led  the  public ;  it  created  a  new 
humorous  atmosphere,  one  distinctively  original  and  distinctively 
American.  Nast  was  the  father  of  American  caricature.  It  was 
he  who  first  made  effective  the  topical  cartoon  for  a  leader ;  who 
first  portrayed  an  individual  by  some  single  trait  or  peculiarity 
of  apparel ;  and  who  first  made  use  of  symbolic  animals  in  carica- 

»  Memories  of  the  Lyceum- 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  41 

ture,  as  the  Tammany  tiger,  the  Democratic  jackass,  and  the 
Republican  elephant — all  three  of  them  creations  of  Nast.  His 
work  is  peculiarly  significant.  He  created  a  new  reading  public. 
Even  the  illiterate  could  read  the  cartoons  during  the  war  period 
and  the  Tweed  ring  days,  and  it  was  their  reading  that  put  an 
end  to  the  evils  portrayed.  General  Grant  when  asked,  *  *  Who  is 
the  foremost  figure  in  civil  life  developed  by  the  Rebellion?" 
replied  instantly,  "I  think  Thomas  Nast.  He  did  as  much  as 
any  one  man  to  preserve  the  Union  and  bring  the  war  to  an 
end."10 

vn 

In  all  the  humorous  writings  of  the  period  there  was  a  deep 
Undercurrent  of  wisdom.  Ever  since  the  days  of  Franklin,  the 
typical  American  has  been  a  maker  of  aphorisms  quaintly  ex 
pressed.  The  man  who  for  years  has  wrestled  with  Nature  on 
frontier  or  farm  has  evolved  a  philosophy  of  his  own.  American 
life  has  tended  to  produce  unique  individualities:  "Sam 
Slicks,"  "Natty  Bumppos,"  "Pudd'nhead  Wilsons,"  "David 
Harums,"  and  "Silas  Laphams," — men  rich  in  self -gained  wis 
dom,  who  talk  in  aphorisms  like  Lincoln's,  "Don't  swap  horses 
when  you  are  crossing  a  stream." 

There  has  been  evolved  what  may  be  called  the  American  type 
of  aphorism — the  concentrated  bit  of  wisdom,  old  it  may  be,  but 
expressed  in  such  a  quaint  and  striking  way  as  to  bring  surprise 
and  laughter.  The  humor  may  come  from  the  homeliness  of  the 
expression,  or  the  unusual  nature  of  the  compared  terms,  or  the 
ludicrous  image  brought  suddenly  to  the  mind.  Examples  are 
easily  found:  "Flattery  is  like  kolone  water,  tew  be  smelt  of, 
but  not  swallowed " ;  "It  is  better  to  be  a  young  June  bug  than 
an  old  bird  of  paradise  " ;  "  The  man  who  blows  his  own  trumpet 
generally  plays  a  solo";  and  "A  reasonable  amount  of  fleas  is 
good  fer  a  dog — keeps  him  from  broodin'  over  bein'  a  dog." 

The  leader  of  the  latter-day  proverbialists  was  Henry  Wheeler 
Shaw,  a  native  of  Massachusetts,  a  student  for  a  time  at  Hamilton 
College,  and  then  for  twenty  years  a  deckhand,  farmer,  and 
auctioneer  in  Ohio.  He  was  forty  before  he  began  to  write. 
His  "Essay  on  the  Mule,"  1859,  found  no  favor.  Rewritten  the 
next  year  in  phonetic  spelling  and  submitted  to  a  New  York  paper 

10  Paine's  Thomas  Nast:  His  Period  and  His  Pictures. 


42  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

as  "A  Essa  on  tla>  Muel,  bi  Josh  Billings,"  it  became  quickly 
famous.  The  people  of  the  early  seventies  wanted  local  color. 
the  tang,  as  it  were,  of  wild  fruit, — life,  fresh,  genuine,  and  first 
hand.  They  gave  a  languid  approval  to  Holmes 's  Poet  of  the 
lirt  uli  fast  Table,  but  bought  enormous  editions  of  Josh  Billings' 
Farmers9  Allnwnax.  The  edition  of  1870  sold  90,000  copies  in 
three  months;  that  of  1871  sold  no  fewer  than  127,000. 

The  humor  of  "Josh  Billings"  is  confined  to  his  aphorisms. 
In  his  longer  writings  and  indeed  in  his  lectures,  as  we  read 
them  to-day,  he  is  flat  and  insufferable.  He  has  little  of  the 
high  spirits  and  zest  and  lightness  of  "Phrenix"  and  "Ward": 
he  began  his  humorous  work  too  late  in  life  for  such  effects ;  but 
he  surpasses  them  all  in  seriousness  and  moral  poise.  That  the 
times  demanded  misspelling  and  clownishness  is  to  be  deplored, 
for  Shaw  was  a  philosopher,  broad  and  sane ;  how  broad  and  sane 
one  can  see  best  in  Uncle  Esek's  Wisdom,  a  column  contributed 
for  years  to  the  Century  Magazine,  and,  at  the  request  of  J.  G. 
Holland,  printed  in  ordinary  spelling. 

4  *  With  me  everything  must  be  put  in  two  or  three  lines,"  he 
once  declared,  but  his  two  or  three  lines  are  always  as  com 
pressed  as  if  written  by  Emerson.  He  deals  for  the  most  part 
with  the  moral  side  of  life  with  a  common  sense  as  sane  as  Frank 
lin's.  So  wide  was  the  field  of  his  work  that  one  may  find  quo 
tations  from  him  on  nearly  every  question  that  is  concerned  with 
conduct.  His  stamp  is  on  all  he  wrote.  One  may  quote  from 
him  at  random  and  be  sure  of  wisdom : 

The  best  cure  for  rheumatism  is  to  thank  the  Lord  it  ain't  the  gout. 

Building  air  castles  is  a  harmless  business  as  long  as  you  don't  at 
tempt  !•»  live  in  them. 

Politeness  haz  won  more  viktorys  than  logick  ever  haz. 

Jealousy  is  simply  another  name  for  self-love. 

Kaith  was  given  to  man  to  lengthen  out  his  reason. 

What  the  moral  army  needs  just  now  is  more  rank  and  file  and  fewer 
brigadier  generals. 

vin 

The  great  tide  of  comic  writings  became  fast  and  furious  in 
the  seventies.  In  1872  no  fewer  than  nine  comic  papers  were 
established  in  New  York  alone:  The  Brickbat,  The  Cartoon, 
AY/////,-  Ltd'u  '.<?  Budget  of  Fun,  The  Jolly  Joker,  Nick-nax,  Mer- 
ryman's  Monthly,  The  Moon,  The  Phunny  Fellow,  The  Thistle, 


THE  LAUGHTER  OF  THE  WEST  43 

and  perhaps  others.  Some  died  after  the  first  issue,  some  per 
sisted  longer.  Every  year  saw  its  own  crop  of  comics  rise, 
flourish  and  die.  In  1877  Puck  was  established,  the  first  really 
successful  comic  paper  in  America;  in  1881  appeared  Judge; 
and  in  1883  Life,  the  first  to  succeed  without  politics. 

Very  little  of  all  this  humorous  product  can  be  called  litera 
ture;  the  greater  part  of  it  already  has  passed  into  oblivion; 
yet  for  all  that  the  movement  that  produced  it  cannot  be  neg 
lected  by  one  who  would  study  the  period.  The  outburst  of  hu 
mor  in  the  sixties  and  the  seventies  was  indeed  significant. 
Poor  though  the  product  may  have  been,  it  was  American  in 
background  and  spirit,  and  it  was  drawn  from  no  models  save 
life  itself.  For  the  first  time  America  had  a  national  literature 
in  the  broad  sense  of  the  word,  original  and  colored  by  its  own 
soil.  The  work  of  every  one  in  the  school  was  grounded  in 
sincerity.  The  worker  saw  with  his  own  eyes  and  he  looked 
only  for  truth.  He  attacked  sentimentality  and  gush  and  all 
that  was  affected  and  insincere.  Born  of  the  great  moral  awak 
ening  of  the  war,  the  humor  had  in  it  the  Cervantes  spirit. 
Nast,  for  instance,  in  his  later  years  declared,  "I  have  never 
allowed  myself  to  attack  anything  I  did  not  believe  in  my  soul 
to  be  wrong  and  deserving  of  the  worst  fate  that  could  befall 
it."  The  words  are  significant.  The  laughter  of  the  period 
was  not  the  mere  crackling  of  thorns  under  a  pot,  not  a  mere 
fusillade  of  quips  and  puns ;  there  was  depth  in  it  and  purpose. 
It  swept  away  weakness  and  wrongs.  It  purged  America  and 
brought  sanity  and  health  of  soul.  From  the  work  of  the  hu 
morists  followed  the  second  accomplishment  of  the  period :  those 
careful  studies  in  prose  and  verse  of  real  life  in  the  various 
sections  of  America. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  n 

GEORGE  HORATIO  DERBY.  (1823-1861.)  Ph&nixiana,  or  Sketches  and 
Burlesques  by  John  Phoenix,  N.  Y.  1855;  The  Squibob  Papers,  N.  Y.  1859; 
Phcenixiana,  or  Sketches  and  Burlesques  by  John  Phcenix.  Introduction  by 
John  Kendrick  Bangs.  Illustrated  by  Kemble.  N.  Y.  1903. 

CHARLES  FARRAR  BROWNE.  (1834-1867.)  Artemus  Ward,  His  Book. 
N.  Y.  1862;  Artemus  Ward,  His  Travels.  1.  Miscellaneous.  2.  Among  tha 

11  No  attempt  has  been  made  to  make  the  bibliographies  in  this  volume 
exhaustive  or  to  transcribe  title  pages. 


44  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Mormons,  N.  Y.  1865;  Betsey  Jane  Ward.  Hur  Book  of  Ooaks.  N.  Y. 
1866;  Artcmua  Ward  in  London  and  Other  Papers.  N.  Y.  1867;  Artemus 
Ward's  Panorama  as  Exhibited  in  Egyptian  Hall,  London.  Edited  by  his 
.  \,(  Ht,.rs.  T.  \V.  Robertson  and  E.  P.  Kingston.  N.  Y.  1869;  The  Genial 
.s/ioi/-wan,  London,  1870  ;v  Artemus  Ward,  His  Works  Complete,  with  a  bio- 
jrraphu-al  sketch  by  M.  D.  Landon.  N.  Y.  1875;  The  Complete  Works  of 
Artemu*  Ward.  London.  1910. 

DAVID  Ross  LOCKS.  (1833-1888.)  Divers  Views,  Opinions,  and  Prophe 
cies  of  Yours  Trooly,  Petroleum  V.  Nasby.  1865;  Nasby  Papers.  With  an 
Introduction  by  G.  A.  Sala.  London.  1866;  Swingin'  Round  the  Cirkle.  By 
Petroleum  I".  \asby.  llis  Ideas  of  Men,  Politics,  and  Things,  During  1866. 
Illustrated  by  Thomas  Nast.  Boston.  1867;  Ekkoes  from  Kentucky.  By 
Petroleum  V.  Nasby.  Illustrated  by  Thomas  Nast.  Boston.  1868;  The 
Strujitiles  (tiocial,  Financial,  and  Political)  of  Petroleum  V.  Nasby.  With 
;ui  Introduction  by  Charles  Sumner.  Illustrated  by  Thomas  Nast.  Boston. 
1-7-':  \,,sby  in  Exile.  Toledo.  1882. 

THOMAS  NAST.  (1840-1902.)  Thomas  Nast.  His  Period  and  His  Pic 
tures.  By  Albert  Bigelow  Paine.  1904;  Life  and  Letters  of  Thomas  Nast, 
Albert  Bigelow  Paine,  1910. 

HI.NKY  WHEELEB  SHAW.  Josh  Billings:  His  Sayings.  New  York.  1865; 
Josh  Billings  on  Ice  and  Other  Things.  N.  Y.  1868;  Josh  Billings'  Farmers' 
Allmanax  for  the  Year  1870.  N.  Y.  1870;  Old  Probabilities;  Contained 
in  One  Volume.  Farmers'  Allmanax  1870-1880.  N.  Y.  1879;  Josh  Bill 
ings'  Old  Farmers'  Allmanax,  1870-1879.  N.  Y.  1902;  Complete  Comic  Writ 
ings  of  Josh  Billings  with  biographical  introduction.  Illustrated  by 
Thomas  Nast.  N.  Y.;  Lt/6  of  Henry  W.  Shaw,  by  F.  S.  Smith.  1883. 


CHAPTER  III 

MARK   TWAIN 

"With  Mark  Twain,  American  literature  became  for  the  first 
time  really  national.  He  was  the  first  man  of  letters  of  any 
distinction  to  be  born  west  of  the  Mississippi.  He  spent  his 
boyhood  and  young  manhood  near  the  heart  of  the  continent, 
along  the  great  river  during  the  vital  era  when  it  was  the  bound 
ary  line  between  known  and  unknown  America,  and  when  it 
resounded  from  end  to  end  with  the  shouts  and  the  confusion  of 
the  first  great  migration  from  the  East;  he  lived  for  six  thrilling 
years  in  the  camps  and  the  boom  towns  and  the  excited  cities  of 
Nevada  and  California;  and  then,  at  thirty-one,  a  raw  product 
of  the  raw  West,  he  turned  his  face  to  the  Atlantic  Coast,  mar 
ried  a  rare  soul  from  one  of  the  refined  families  of  New  York 
State,  and  settled  down  to  a  literary  career  in  New  England, 
with  books  and  culture  and  trips  abroad,  until  in  his  old  age 
Oxford  University  could  confer  upon  him — ''Tom  Sawyer," 
whose  schooling  in  the  ragged  river  town  had  ended  before  he 
was  twelve — the  degree  that  had  come  to  America  only  as  borne 
by  two  or  three  of  the  Brahmins  of  New  England.  Only 
America,  and  America  at  a  certain  period,  could  produce  a 
paradox  like  that. 

Mark  Twain  interpreted  the  West  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
native.  The  group  of  humorists  who  had  first  brought  to  the 
East  the  Western  spirit  and  the  new  laughter  had  all  of  them 
been  reared  in  the  older  sections.  John  Phoenix  and  Artemus 
Ward  and  Josh  Billings  were  born  in  New  England,  and  Nasby 
and  many  of  the  others  were  natives  of  New  York  State.  Alij 
of  them  in  late  boyhood  had  gone  West  as  to  a  wonderland  and 
had  breathed  the  new  atmosphere  as  something  strange  and  ex-\ 
hilarating,  but  Mark  Twain  was  native  born.  He  was  himself  a! 
part  of  the  West ;  he  removed  from  it  so  as  to  see  it  in  true  per 
spective,  and  so  became  its  best  interpreter.  Hawthorne  had  once 

45 


46  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

expressed  a  wish  to  see  some  part  of  America  "where  the  damned 
shadow  of  Europe  has  never  fallen."  Mark  Twain  spent  his 
life  until  he  was  thirty  in  Mi.-h  unshadowed  places.  \Vhen  he 
wrote  he  wrote  without  a  thought  of  other  writings ;  it  was  as  if 
the  West  itself  was  dictating  its  autobiography. 


The  father  of  Mark  Twain,  John  Clemens,  a  dreamer  and  an 
idealist,  had  left  Virginia  with  his  young  wife  early  in  the 
twenties  to  join  the  restless  tide  that  even  then  was  setting 
strongly  westward.  Their  first  settlement  was  at  Gainsborough, 
Tennessee,  where  was  born  their  first  son,  Orion,  but  they  re 
mained  there  not  long.  Indeed,  like  all  emigrants  of  their  type, 
they  remained  nowhere  long.  During  the  next  ten  or  eleven 
years  five  other  children  were  born  to  them  at  four  different 
stations  along  the  line  of  their  westward  progress.'  When  the 
fifth  child  arrived,  to  be  christened  Samuel  Langhorne,  they  were 
living  at  Florida,  Missouri,  a  squalid  little  hamlet  fifty  miles 
west  of  the  Mississippi.  That  was  November  30,  1835.  Four 
years  later  they  made  what  proved  to  be  their  last  move,  set 
tling  at  Hannibal,  Missouri,  a  small  river  town  about  a  hundred 
miles  above  St.  Louis.  Here  it  was  that  the  future  Mark  Twain 
spent  the  next  fourteen  years,  those  formative  years  between 
four  and  eighteen  that  determine  so  greatly  the  bent  of  the 
later  life. 

The  Hannibal  of  the  forties  and  the  fifties  was  hardly  a  town 
one  would  pick  deliberately  for  the  education  of  a  great  man 
of  letters.  It  lay  just  a  few  miles  above  the  northern  line  of 
Pike  County — that  Pike  County,  Missouri,  that  gave  name  to 
the  shiftless,  hand-to-mouth,  ague-shaken  type  of  humanity  later 
to  be  celebrated  so  widely  as  the  Pike.  Hannibal  was  not 
a  Pike  community,  but  it  was  typically  southwestern  in  its  som 
nolent,  slave-holding,  care-free  atmosphere.  The  one  thing  that 
forever  rescued  it  from,  the  commonplace  was  the  River,  the 
tremendous  Mississippi,  source  of  endless  dreams  and  romance. 
Mark  Twain  has  given  us  a  picture,  perfect  as  an  etching,  of  this 
river  and  the  little  town  that  nestled  beside  it : 

A  tier  all  these  years  I  can  picture  that  old  time  to  myself  now,  just 
as  it  was  then :  the  white  town  drowsing  in  the  sunshine  of  a  summer's 


MARK  TWAIN  47 

morning;  the  streets  empty,  or  pretty  nearly  so;  one  or  two  clerks 
sitting  in  front  of  the  Water  Street  stores,  with  their  splint-bottomed 
chairs  tilted  back  against  the  wall,  chins  on  breast,  hats  slouched  over 
their  faces,  asleep — with  shingle  shavings  enough  around  to  show  what 
broke  them  down;  a  sow  and  a  litter  of  pigs  loafing  along  the  side 
walk,  doing  a  good  business  in  water-melon  rinds  and  seeds;  two  or 
three  lonely  little  freight  piles  scattered  around  the  "levee";  a  pile  of 
"skids"  on  the  slope  of  the  stone-paved  wharf,  and  the  fragrant  town 
drunkard  asleep  in  the  shadow  of  them;  two  or  three  wood  flats  at  the 
head  of  the  wharf,  but  nobody  to  listen  to  the  peaceful  lapping  of  the 
wavelets  against  them;  the  great  Mississippi,  the  majestic,  the  mag 
nificent  Mississippi,  rolling  its  mile-wide  tide  along,  shining  in  the  sun ; 
the  dense  forest  away  on  the  other  side;  the  "point"  above  the  town, 
and  the  "point"  below,  bounding  the  river  glimpse  and  turning  it  into 
a  sort  of  sea,  and  withal  a  very  still  and  brilliant  and  lonely  one. 
Presently  a  film  of  dark  smoke  appears  above  one  of  these  remote 
"points";  instantly  a  negro  drayman,  famous  for  his  quick  eye  and 
prodigious  voice,  lifts  up  the  cry,  "S-t-e-a-m  boat  a-comin'!"  and  the 
scene  changes !  The  town  drunkard  stirs,  the  clerks  wake  up,  a  furious 
clatter  of  drays  follows,  every  house  and  store  pours  out  a  human 
contribution,  and  all  in  a  twinkling  the  dead  town  is  alive  and  moving. 
Drays,  carts,  men,  boys,  all  go  hurrying1  to  a  common  center,  the  wharf. 
Assembled  there,  the  people  fasten  their  eyes  upon  the  coming  boat  as 
upon  a  wonder  they  are  seeing  for  the  first  time.  .  .  .  The  furnace 
doors  are  open  and  the  fires  glaring  bravely;  the  upper  decks  are  black 
with  passengers;  the  captain  stands  by  the  big  bell,  calm,  imposing, 
the  envy  of  all;  great  volumes  of  the  blackest  smoke  are  rolling  and 
tumbling  out  of  the  chimneys — a  husbanded  grandeur  created  with  a 
bit  of  pitch  pine  just  before  arriving  at  a  town;  the  crew  are  grouped 
on  the  forecastle;  the  broad  stage  is  run  far  out  over  the  port  bow, 
and  an  envied  deck-hand  stands  picturesquely  on  the  end  of  it  with  a 
coil  of  rope  in  his  hand ;  the  pent  steam  is  screaming  through  the  gage- 
cocks;  the  captain  lifts  his  hand,  a  bell  rings,  the  wheels  stop;  then 
they  turn  back,  churning  the  water  to  foam,  and  the  steamer  is  at  rest. 
Then  such  a  scramble  as  there  is  to  get  aboard,  and  to  get  ashore,  and 
to  take  in  freight,  and  to  discharge  freight,  all  at  one  and  the  same  time; 
and  such  a  yelling  and  cursing  as  the  mates  facilitate  it  all  with !  Ten 
minutes  later  the  steamer  is  under  way  again,  with  no  flag  on  the  jack- 
staff  and  no  black  smoke  issuing  from  the  chimneys.  After  ten  more 
minutes  the  town  is  dead  again,  and  the  town  drunkard  asleep  by  the 
skids  once  more.1 

It  was  the  romance  of  this  river,  the  vastness  and  the  mys 
tery  of  it,  the  great  unknown  world  which  lay  beyond  those 
"points"  where  all  things  disappeared,  that  made  of  the  boy  a 
restless  soul,  a  dreamer  and  an  idealist — that  made  of  him  in- 

i  Old  Times  on  the  Mississippi,  Chap.  I. 


48  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

deed  the  Mark  Twain  of  the  later  years.  His  books  nowhere 
into  the  pure  serene  of  literature  unless  touched  at  some 
point  by  this  magic  stream  that  flowed  so  marvelously  through 
his  boyhood.  The  two  discoverers  of  the  Mississippi  were  De 
Soto  and  Mark  Twain. 

The  first  crisis  in  the  boy's  life  came  in  his  twelfth  year,  when 
the  death  of  his  father  sent  him  as  an  apprentice  to  a  country 
newspaper  office,  that  most  practical  and  most  exacting  of  all 
training  schools  for  youth.  Two  years  on  the  Missouri  Courier, 
four  years  on  the  Hannibal  Journal,  then  the  restlessness  of  his 
clan  sent  him  wandering  into  the  East  even  as  it  had  sent  Arte- 
111  us  \V;inl  and  Nasby  into  the  West.  For  fifteen  months  he 
served  as  compositor  in  New  York  City  and  Philadelphia,  then 
'a  great  homesickness  for  the  river  came  upon  him.  From  boy 
hood  it  had  been  his  dream  to  be  the  pilot  of  a  Mississippi  steam 
boat;  all  other  professions  seemed  flat  and  lifeless  compared 
with  that  satisfying  and  boundless  field  of  action;  and  it  is  not 
I  strange  that  in  April,  1857,  we  find  him  installed  as  Horace 
Bixby  's  "cub"  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  career. 

During  the  next  four  years  he  gave  himself  heart  and  soul  to 
the  almost  superhuman  task  of  committing  to  memory  every 
sandbar  and  point  and  landmark  in  twelve  hundred  miles  of  a 
shifting,  treacherous  river.  The  difficulties  he  has  explained 
fully  in  his  book.  It  was  a  college  course  of  four  years,  and 
no  man  ever  had  a  better  one.  To  quote  his  own  words : 

In  that  brief,  sharp  schooling  I  got  personally  and  familiarly  ac 
quainted  with  ail  the  different  types  of  human  nature  that  are  to  be 
found  in  fiction,  biography,  or  history.  When  I  find  a  well-drawn 
character  in  fiction  or  biography,  I  generally  take  a  warm  personal 
interest  in  him,  for  the  reason  that  I  have  known  him  before — met  him 
on  the  river.2 

It  taught  him  far  more  than  this.  The  pilot  of  a  great  Mis 
M-sippi  boat  was  a  man  with  peculiar  responsibilities.  The  lives 
of  the  passengers  and  the  safety  of  the  cargo  were  absolutely 
in  his  hands.  His  authority  was  above  even  the  captain's.  Only 
picked  men  of  courage  and  judgment  with  a  self-reliance  that 
never  wavered  in  any  crisis  were  fit  material  for  pilots.  To 
quote  Horace  Bixby,  the  most  noted  of  them  all: 

2  Paine,  Mark  Ticain,  a  Biography,  i :   128. 


MARK  TWAIN  49 

There  were  no  signal  lights  along  the  shore  in  those  days,  and  no 
searchlights  on  the  vessels ;  everything  was  blind,  and  on  a  dark,  misty 
night  in  a  river  full  of  snags  and  shifting  sand-bars  and  changing 
shores,  a  pilot's  judgment  had  to  be  founded  on  absolute  certainty* 

Under  such  conditions  men  were  valued  only  for  what  they 
actually  could  do.  There  was  no  entrance  into  the  inner  circle 
of  masters  of  the  river  save  through  genuineness  and  real  effi 
ciency.  Sentimentalizing  and  boasting  and  sham  died  instantly 
in  that  stern  atmosphere.  To  live  for  four  years  in  daily  con 
tact  with  such  men  taught  one  coarseness  of  speech  and  an  ap 
palling  fluency  in  the  use  of  profanity,  but  it  taught  one  at  the 
same  time  to  look  with  supreme  contempt  upon  inefficiency  and 
pretense. 

The  "cub"  became  at  length  a  pilot,  to  be  entrusted  after  a 
time  with  some  of  the  finest  boats  on  the  river.  He  became 
very  efficient  in  his  hard-learned  profession  so  conspicuously 
so  that  he  won  the  commendation  even  of  Bixby,  who  could  say 
in  later  years,  "Sam  Clemens  never  had  an  accident  either  as 
a  steersman  or  as  a  pilot,  except  once  when  he  got  aground  for 
a  few  hours  in  the  bagasse  (cane)  smoke,  with  no  damage  to  any 
one. ' ' 4  But  the  war  put  a  sudden  end  to  the  piloting.  The 
river  was  closed,  and  in  April,  1861,  he  went  reluctantly  back 
to  Hannibal.  "I  loved  the  profession  far  better  than  any  I 
have  ever  followed  since,"  he  declared  in  his  later  years,  "and 
I  took  a  measureless  pride  in  it."  It  is  very  possible  that  but 
for  the  war  and  the  change  which  it  wrought  upon  the  river, 
Mark  Twain  might  have  passed  his  whole  life  as  a  Mississippi 
pilot. 

II 

After  a  few  weeks  in  a  self-recruited  troop  that  fell  to  pieces 
before  it  could  join  the  Confederate  army,  the  late  pilot,  now 
twenty-six  years  old,  started  by  stage  coach  across  the  Plains 
with  his  brother  Orion,  who  had  just  been  appointed  secretary 
to  the  new  Governor  of  Nevada.  It  was  Mark  Twain's  entry 
upon  what,  in  college  terms,  may  be  called  his  graduate  course. 
It  was  six  years  long  and  it  covered  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
eras  in  the  history  of  Western  America. 

3  Paine,  Mark  Twain,  a  Biography,  i:  146. 
4 lUd.%  i:  155. 


50  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

For  a  few  restive  months  he  remained  at  Carson  City  as  his 
brother's  assistant,  then  in  characteristic  fashion  he  broke  away 
to  join  the  <  xntr.l  tide  of  gold  seekers  that  was  surging  through 
all  the  mountains  of  Nevada.  During  the  next  year  he  lived  in 
mining  camps  with  prospectors  and  eager  claim-holders.  Luck, 
VI.T,  seemed  against  him;  at  least  it  promised  him  little  as 
a  miner,  and  when  the  Virginia  City  Enterprise,  to  which  he 
had  contributed  letters,  offered  him  a  position  on  its  staff  of 
reporters,  he  jumped  at  the  opportunity. 

Now  for  two  years  he  lived  at  the  very  heart  of  the  mining 
regions  of  the  West,  in  Virginia  City,  the  home  of  the  Comstock 
lode,  then  at  its  highest  boom.  Everything  about  him — the  new 
ness  and  rawness  of  things,  the  peculiar  social  conditions,  the 
atmosphere  of  recklessness  and  excitement,  the  money  that 
flowed  everywhere  in  fabulous  quantities — everything  was 
unique.  Even  the  situation  of  the  city  was  remarkable.  Kings 
ton,  who  visited  it  with  Artemus  Ward  while  Mark  Twain  was 
still  a  member  of  the  Enterprise  staff,  speaks  of  it  as  "perched 
up  on  the  side  of  Mt.  Davidson  some  five  or  six  thousand  feet 
above  sea  level,  with  a  magnificent  view  before  us  of  the  desert. 
.  .  .  Nothing  but  arid  rocks  and  sandy  plains  sprinkled  with 
sage  brush.  No  village  for  full  two  hundred  miles,  and  any 
number  of  the  worst  type  of  Indians — the  Goshoots — agreeably 
besprinkling  the  path."6  Artemus  Ward  estimated  its  popula 
tion  at  twelve  thousand.  lie  was  impressed  by  its  wildness,  '  *  its 
splendid  streets  paved  with  silver  ore,"  "its  unadulterated  cus- 
sedness, ' '  its  vigilance  committee  ' '  which  hangs  the  more  vicious 
of  the  pestiferous  crowd,"  and  its  fabulous  output  of  silver 
which  is  "melted  down  into  bricks  the  size  of  common  house 
bricks,  then  loaded  into  huge  wagons,  each  drawn  by  eight  and 
twelve  mules,  and  sent  off  to  San  Francisco. ' ' 6 

It  was  indeed  a  strange  area  of  life  that  passed  before  the 
young  Mississippi  pilot.  For  two  winters  he  was  sent  down 
to  report  the  new  legislature  of  the  just-organized  territory, 
and  it  was  while  engaged  in  this  picturesque  gala  task  that 
he  sent  back  his  letters  signed  for  the  first  time  Mark  Twain. 
That  was  the  winter  of  1863.  It  was  time  now  for  him  to  seek 
a  wider  field.  Accordingly,  the  following  May  he  went  down 

»  Art  emus    Ward,    His    Travel*. 
«Paine's  Mark  Twain,  i:  260. 


MARK  TWAIN  51 

to  San  Francisco,  where  at  length  he  found  employment  on  the 
Morning  Call. 

Now  for  the  first  time  the  young  reporter  found  himself  in 
a  literary  atmosphere.  Poets  and  sketch-writers  and  humorists 
were  everywhere.  There  was  at  least  one  flourishing  literary 
journal,  the  Golden  Era,  and  its  luxuriously  appointed  office 
was  the  literary  center  of  the  Pacific  Coast.  "Joaquin  Miller 
recalls  from  an  old  diary,  kept  by  him  then,  having  seen  Adah 
Isaacs  Menken,  Prentice  Mulford,  Bret  Harte,  Charles  Warren 
Stoddard,  Fitzhugh  Ludlow,  Mark  Twain,  Orpheus  C.  Kerr, 
Artemus  Ward,  Gilbert  Densmore,  W.  S.  Kendall,  and  Mrs. 
Hitchcock  assembled  there  at  one  time. ' ' 7  Charles  Henry  Webb 
was  just  starting  a  literary  weekly,  the  Californian,  and  when, 
a  year  later,  Bret  Harte  was  made  its  editor,  Mark  Twain  was 
added  to  the  contributing  staff.  It  was  the  real  beginning  of 
his  literary  career.  He  received  now  helpful  criticism.  In  a 
letter  written  in  after  years  to  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  he  says: 

Bret  Harte  trimmed  and  trained  and  schooled  me  patiently  until  he 
changed  me  from  an  awkward  utterer  of  coarse  grotesqueness  to  a 
writer  of  paragraphs  and  chapters  that  have  found  a  certain  favor  in 
the  eyes  of  even  some  of  the  very  decentest  people  in  the  land.8 

To  the  Californian  and  the  Era  he  now  contributed  that  series 
of  sketches  which  later  was  drawn  upon  for  material  for  his  first 
published  book.  But  the  old  restlessness  was  upon  him  again. 
He  struck  out  into  the  Tuolumne  Hills  with  Jim  Gillis  as  a 
pocket  miner  and  for  months  lived  as  he  could  in  shacks  and 
camps,  panning  between  drenching  showers  worthless  gravel, 
expecting  every  moment  to  find  gold.  He  found  no  gold,  but 
he  found  what  was  infinitely  richer.  In  later  years  in  a  letter 
to  Gillis  he  wrote: 

It  makes  my  heart  ache  yet  to  call  to  mind  some  of  those  days.  Still 
it  should  n't,  for  right  in  the  depths  of  their  poverty  and  their  pocket- 
hunting  vagabondage  lay  the  germ  of  my  coming  good  fortune.  You 
remember  the  one  gleam  of  jollity  that  shot  across  our  dismal  sojourn  in 
the  rain  and  mud  of  Angel's  Camp — I  mean  that  day  we  sat  around 
the  tavern  and  heard  that  chap  tell  about  the  frog  and  how  they  filled 
him  with  shot.  And  you  remember  how  we  quoted  from  the  yarn  and 
laughed  over  it  out  there  on  the  hillside  while  you  and  dear  old  Stoker 

TPaine's  Mark  Twain,  i:  260. 

8  Greenslet's  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  98. 


51  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

panned  and  washed.  I  jotted  the  story  down  in  my  note-book  that  day, 
.•uld  have  been  plad  to  get  ten  or  fifteen  dollars  for  it— I  was  just 
that  blind.  Hut  then  we  were  so  hard  up.  I  published  that  story,  ami 
it  became  widely  known  in  America,  India,  China,  England,  and  the 
reputation  it  made  for  me  has  paid  me  thousands  and  thousands  of 
dollars  since.' 

The  publication  in  New  York,  May  1,  1867,  of  The  Celebrated 
Jumping  Frog  of  Calaveras  County  and  Other  Sketches  and 
tlie  delivery  a  week  later  by  the  author  of  The  Jumping  Frog 
of  a  lecture  on  the  Sandwich  Islands  marks  the  end  of  the 
period  of  preparation  in  Mark  Twain's  life.  A  new  American 
author  had  arrived. 

Ill 

Send  this  Mississippi  pilot,  printer,  adventurer,  miner  in  rough 
camps  of  the  Sierras,  to  Paris,  Italy,  Constantinople,  ami  the 
Holy  Land,  and  what  will  be  his  impressions?  For  an  answer 
we  must  read  The  Innocints  Abroad.  It  will  be  no  Outrt  M>  r, 
we  are  certain  of  that,  and  no  Pencillings  by  the  Way.  Before 
a  line  of  it  was  written  an  atmosphere  had  been  created  unique 
in  American  literature,  for  where,  save  in  the  California  of 
1867,  was  there  ever  optimism,  nay,  romanticism,  that  could 
reply  instantly  to  the  young  reporter  who  asked  to  be  sent  on  a 
Don  Quixote  pilgrimage  to  Europe  and  the  Orient,  "Go.  Twelve 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  will  be  paid  for  you  before  the  vessel 
sails,  and  your  only  instructions  are  that  you  will  continue  to 
write  at  such  times  and  from  such  places  as  you  deem  proper,  and 
in  the  same  style  that  heretofore  secured  you  the  favor  of  the 
readers  of  the  Alia  Calif  or  nia"l 

It  was  not  to  be  a  tour  of  Europe,  as  Longfellow  and  Willis 

and  Taylor  had  made  it,  the  pilgrimage  of  a  devotee  to  holy 

shrines;  it  was  to  be  a  great  picnic  with  sixty-seven  in  the  picnic 

v  >arty.     Moreover,  the  recorder  of  it  was  bound  by  his  instruc- 

ions  to  report  it  in  the  style  that  had  won  him  California  fame. 

t  was  to  be  a  Western  book,  written  by  a  Westerner  from  the 

Western  standpoint,  but  this  does  not  imply  that  his  Western 

•eaders  expected  an  illiterate  production  full  of  coarseness  and 

rude  wit.     California  had  produced  a  school  of  poets  and  ro- 

jmancers;  she  had  serious  literary  journals,  and  she  was  proud 

oPaine's  Mark  Twain,  i:  393. 


MARK  TWAIN  53 

of  them.  The  letters,  if  California  was  to  set  her  stamp  of  ap 
proval  upon  them,  must  have  literary  charm;  they  must  have, 
moreover,  freshness  and  originality ;  and  they  must  sparkle  with 
that  spirit  of  humor  which  already  had  begun  to  be  recognized 
as  a  native  product. 
We  open  the  book  and  linger  a  moment  over  the  preface : 

Notwithstanding  it  is  only  the  record  of  a  picnic,  it  has  a  purpose, 
which  is,  to  suggest  to  the  reader  how  he  would  be  likely  to  see  Europe 
and  the  East  if  he  looked  at  them  with  his  own  eyes  instead  of  the  eyes 
of  those  who  traveled  in  those  countries  before  him.  I  make  small 
pretence  of  showing  any  one  how  he  ought  to  look  at  objects  of  interest 
beyond  the  sea — other  books  do  that,  and  therefore,  even  if  I  were 
competent  to  do  it,  there  is  no  need. 

I  offer  no  apologies  for  any  departures  from  the  usual  style  of  travel- 
writing  that  may  be  charged  against  me — for  I  think  I  have  seen  with 
impartial  eyes,  and  I  am  sure  I  have  written  at  least  honestly,  whether 
wisely  or  not. 

Let  us  read  the  book  straight  through.  We  are  impressed 
with  the  fact  that,  despite  the  supposition  of  its  first  readers,  it 
is  not  primarily  a  humorous  work.  It  is  a  genuine  book  of 
travels.  It  is  first  of  all  an  honest  record,  even  as  its  author 
averred.  In  the  second  place  it  is  the  book  of  a  young  man,  a 
young  man  on  a  lark  and  full  of  the  highest  spirits.  The  world 
is  good — it  is  a  good  show,  though  it  is  full  of  absurdities  and 
of  humbugs  that  should  be  exposed.  The  old  stock  jokes  of 
the  grand  tour — the  lack  of  soap,  the  charge  for  candles,  the 
meeting  of  supposed  foreigners  who  break  unexpectedly  into  the 
best  of  English,  and  all  the  well-known  others — were  new  to  the 
public  then  and  they  came  with  freshness.  Then  it  is  the  book 
of  one  who  saw,  even  as  he  claimed,  with  his  own  eyes.  This 
genuine  American,  with  his  training  on  the  river  and  the  wild 
frontier  where  men  and  things  are  what  they  are,  no  more  and 
no  less,  will  be  impressed  only  with  genuineness.  He  will  de 
scribe  things  precisely  as  he  sees  them.  Gibraltar  "is  pushed 
out  into  the  sea  on  the  end  of  a  flat,  narrow  strip  of  land,  and 
is  suggestive  of  a  '  gob '  of  mud  on  the  end  of  a  shingle " ;  of  the 
Coliseum:  "everybody  recognizes  at  once  that  'looped  and  win 
dowed'  bandbox  with  a  side  bitten  out";  and  of  a  famous  river: 
' '  It  is  popular  to  admire  the  Arno.  It  is  a  great  historical  creek 
with  four  feet  in  the  channel  and  some  scows  floating  around.  It 
would  be  a  very  passable  river  if  they  would  pump  some  water 


54  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

into  it."  That  was  not  written  for  a  joke:  it  was  the  way  the 
Arno  honestly  impressed  the  former  Mississippi  pilot. 

II.  is  not  always  critical.  Genuineness  and  real  worth  never 
fail  to  impress  him.  Often  he  stands  before  a  landscape,  a  city, 
a  cathedral,  as  enthusiastic  as  any  of  the  older  school  of  travel 
ers.  The  book  is  full  of  vivid  descriptions,  some  of  them  almost 
poetic  in  their  spirit  and  diction.  But  things  must  be  what  they 
pretend  to  be,  or  they  will  disgust  him.  Everywhere  there  is 
scorn  for  the  mere  echoer  of  the  enthusiasm  of  others.  He  will 
not  gush  over  an  unworthy  thing  even  if  he  knows  the  whole 
world  has  gushed  over  it.  Da  Vinci's  "Last  Supper,"  painted 
on  a  dilapidated  wall  and  stained  and  scarred  and  dimmed,  may 
once  have  been  beautiful,  he  admits,  but  it  is  not  so  now.  The 
pilgrims  who  stand  before  it  "able  to  speak  only  in  catchy  ejac 
ulations  of  rapture"  fill  him  with  wrath.  "How  can  they  see 
what  is  not  visible?"  The  work  of  the  old  masters  fills  him 
always  with  indignation.  They  painted  not  Hebrews  in  their 
scriptural  pieces,  but  Italians.  "Their  nauseous  adulation  of 
princely  patrons  was  more  prominent  to  me  and  claimed  my 
attention  more  than  the  charms  of  color."  "Raphael  pictured 
such  infernal  villains  as  Catherine  and  Marie  de  Medicis  seated 
in  heaven  conversing  familiarly  with  the  Virgin  Mary  and  the 
angels  (to  say  nothing  of  higher  personages),  and  yet  my  friends 
abuse  me  because  I  am  a  little  prejudiced  against  the  old  mas 
ters." 

II.TC  we  have  a  note  that  was  to  become  more  and  more  em 
phatic  in  Mark  Twain's  work  with  every  year  he  lived:  his  in 
dignation  at  oppression  and  insincerity.  The  cathedrals  of  Italy 
lost  their  beauty  for  him  when  he  saw  the  misery  of  the  popula 
tion.  He  stood  before  the  Grand  Duomo  of  Florence.  "Like 
all  other  men  I  fell  down  and  worshiped  it,  but  when  the  filthy 
beggars  swarmed  around  me  the  contrast  was  too  striking,  too 
suggestive,  and  I  said  '0  sons  of  classic  Italy,  is  the  spirit  of 
enterprise,  of  self-reliance,  of  noble  endeavor,  utterly  dead 
within  ye?  Curse  your  indolent  worthlessness,  why  don't  you 
rob  your  church?'  Three  hundred  happy,  comfortable  priests 
are  employed  in  that  cathedral." 

Everywhere  he  strikes  out  at  sentimentality.  When  he  learns 
how  Abelard  deliberately  sacrificed  Heloise  to  his  own  selfish 
ideals,  he  bursts  out:  "The  tons  of  sentiment  I  have  wasted 


MARK  TWAIN  55 

on  that  unprincipled  humbug  in  my  ignorance!  I  shall  throt 
tle  down  my  emotions  hereafter,  about  this  sort  of  people,  until 
I  have  read  them  up  and  know  whether  they  are  entitled  to 
any  tearful  attentions  or  not."  He  is  eager  to  see  a  French 
' '  grissette, "  but  having  seen  one,  bursts  out  in  true  Artemus 
Ward  fashion:  "Aroint  thee,  wench!  I  sorrow  for  the  vagabond 
student  of  the  Latin  Quarter  now,  even  more  than  formerly  I  en 
vied  him.  Thus  topples  to  the  earth  another  idol  of  my  in 
fancy."  The  story  of  Petrarch's  love  for  Laura  only  fills  him 
with  pity  for  the  outrageously  treated  "Mr.  Laura/'  the  un 
known  husband  of  the  heroine,  who  bore  the  burden  but  got 
none  of  the  glory,  and  when  they  tell  the  thrilling  legend  of  the 
old  medieval  castle,  he  makes  only  the  comment,  "Splendid  leg 
end — splendid  lie — drive  on ! " 

It  was  a  blow  at  the  whole  school  of  American  travel  writers ; 
it  marked  the  passing  of  an  era.  Bret  Harte  in  the  first  volume 
of  the  Overland  Monthly  (1868),  was  the  first  to  outline  the 
Western  standpoint: 

The  days  of  sentimental  journeyings  are  over.  The  dear  old  book 
of  travel  .  .  is  a  thing  of  the  past.  Sentimental  musings  on  foreign 
scenes  are  just  now  restricted  to  the  private  diaries  of  young  and  im 
pressible  ladies  and  clergymen  with  affections  of  the  bronchial  tubes. 
...  A  race  of  good  humored,  engaging  iconoclasts  seem  to  have  pre 
cipitated  themselves  upon  the  old  altars  of  mankind,  and  like  their 
predecessors  of  the  eighth  century,  have  paid  particular  attention  to  the 
holy  church.  Mr.  Howells  has  slashed  one  or  two  sacred  pictorial  can 
vasses  with  his  polished  rapier;  Mr.  Swift  has  made  one  or  two  neat 
long  shots  with  a  rifled  Parrott,  and  Mr.  Mark  Twain  has  used  brick- 
bats  on  stained  glass  windows  with  damaging  effect.  And  those  gentle 
men  have  certainly  brought  down  a  heap  of  rubbish.10 

It  was  the  voice  of  the  new  West  and  of  the  new  era.  With 
The  Innocents  Abroad  begins  the  new  period  in  American  lit-I 
erature.  The  book  is  full  of  the  new  after-the-war  Americanism  \ 
that  did  its  own  thinking,  that  saw  with  its  own  eyes,  that  put 
a  halo  upon  nothing  save  genuineness  and  substantial  worth. 
It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  America  even  in  the  new  seven 
ties  was  still  mawkish  with  sentimentality.  The  very  year  The 
Innocents  Abroad  appeared,  Gates  Ajar  sold  twenty  editions. 
Mark  Twain  came  into  the  age  like  the  Goths  into  Rome.  Stand 
on  the  solid  earth,  he  cried.  Look  with  your  own  eyes.  Wor- 

10  Overland  Monthly,  i:  101. 


56  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

ship  nothing  but  truth  and  genuineness.  Europe  is  no  better 
than  America.  Como  is  beautiful,  but  it  is  not  so  beautiful  as 
Talmr.  Why  this  eternal  glorification  of  things  simply  and 
solely  because  it  is  the  conventional  thing  to  glorify  them? 
"The  critic,"  he  wrote  in  later  years  to  Andrew  Lang,  "has 
actually  imposed  upon  the  world  the  superstition  that  a  paint 
ing  by  Raphael  is  more  valuable  to  the  civilizations  of  the  earth 
than  is  a  chromo;  and  the  august  opera  more  than  the  hurdy 
gurdy  and  the  villagers'  singing  society;  and  the  Latin  classics 
than  Kipling's  far-reaching  bugle  note;  and  Jonathan  Edwards 
than  the  Salvation  Army."11  The  new  American  democracy 
was  speaking.  To  the  man  who  for  four  years  had  learned  in 
the  school  of  Horace  Bixby  there  was  no  high  and  no  low  save 
as  measured,  not  by  appearances  or  by  tradition,  but  by  intrinsic 
worth. 

IV 

It  has  been  customary  in  libraries  to  place  the  earlier  works  of 
Mark  Twain  on  the  same  shelf  as  those  of  Artemus  Ward  and 
Josh  Billings.  To  the  thousands  who  laughed  at  him  as  he 
lectured  from  year*  to  year  he  was  a  mere  maker  of  fun.  The 
public  that  bought  such  enormous  editions  of  The  Innocents 
Abroad  and  Roughing  It  bought  them  as  books  to  laugh  over. 
What  shall  we  say  to-day  of  Mark  Twain's  humor?  A  genera 
tion  has  arisen  to  whom  he  is  but  a  tradition  and  a  set  of  books ; 
what  is  the  verdict  of  this  generation? 

First  of  all,  it  is  necessary  that  we  examine  the  man  himself. 
Nature  seems  to  have  forced  him  into  the  ranks  of  the  come 
dians.  From  his  mother  he  inherited  a  drawl  that  was  inex* 
pressibly  funny ;  he  had  a  laughable  personality,  and  a  laughable 
angle  from  which  he  looked  at  life.  He  could  no  more  help 
provoking  mirth  than  he  could  help  being  himself.  Moreover, 
he  had  been  thrown  during  his  formative  years  into  a  veritable 
training  school  for  humorists.  On  the  river  and  in  the  mines 
and  the  raw  towns  and  cities  of  the  West,  he  had  lived  in  a  gale 
of  high  spirits,  of  loud  laughter,  of  practical  jokes,  and  droll 
stories  that  had  gone  the  rough  round  of  the  boats  or  the  camps. 
His  humor,  therefore,  was  an  echo  of  the  laughter  of  elemental 
men  who  have  been  flung  into  conditions  full  of  incongruities 

"Fame's   Mark   TVatn,  ii:    894. 


MARK  TWAIN  57 

and  strange  contrasts.  It  is  the  humor  of  exaggeration  run 
wild,  of  youthful  high  spirits,  of  rough  practical  jokes,  of  under 
statement,  of  irreverence,  and  gross  absurdity. 

But  the  personality  of  Mark  Twain  no  longer  can  give  life 
to  his  humor ;  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  first  appeared  has  gone 
forever;  the  man  himself  is  becoming  a  mere  legend,  shadowy 
and  more  and  more  distorted;  his  humor  must  be  judged  now 
like  that  of  Cervantes  and  Shakespeare,  apart  from  author  and 
times.  How  does  it  stand  the  test  ?  Not  at  all  well.  There  are 
the  high  spirits  of  the  new  West  in  it — that  element  has  not  evap 
orated — and  there  is  in  it  a  personal  touch,  a  drollery  that  was 
his  individual  contribution  to  humor.  There  was  a  certain  drawl 
in  his  pen  as  well  as  in  his  tongue.  It  is  this  alone  that  saves 
much  of  his  humorous  work  from  flatness.  Concerning  The 
Jumping  Frog,  for  instance.  Haweis  asks  in  true  British  way, 
"What,  I  should  like  to  know,  is  the  fun  of  saying  that  a  frog 
who  has  been  caused  to  swallow  a  quantity  of  shot  cannot  jump 
so  high  as  he  could  before?"  The  answer  is  that  there  is  no  fun 
save  in  the  way  the  story  is  told ;  in  other  words,  save  in  the  in 
comparable  drawl  of  Mark  Twain's  pen.  One  can  only  illus 
trate  : 

The  feller  .  .  .  give  it  back  to  Smiley,  and  says,  very  deliberate, 
"Well,  I  don't  see  no  pints  about  that  frog  that 's  any  better  'n  any 
other  frog." 

"May  be  you  don't,"  Smiley  says.  "May  be  you  understand  frogs, 
and  may  be  you  don't  understand  'em ;  may  be  you  've  had  experience, 
and  may  be  you  ain't,  only  a  amature,  as  it  were.  Any  ways  I  've  got 
my  opinion,  and  I  '11  risk  forty  dollars  that  he  can  out-jump  any  frog  in 
Calaveras  county." 

And  the  feller  studied  a  minute,  and  then  says,  kinder  sad  like. 
"Well,  I'm  only  a  stranger  here,  and  I  ain't  got  no  frog;  but  if  I  had 
a  frog,  I  'd  bet  you !" 

Or  take  this  episode  from  The  Innocents  Abroad  where  he 
tells  of  his  sensations  one  night  as  a  boy  upon  awakening 
and  finding  the  body  of  a  murdered  man  on  the  floor  of  his 
room: 

I  went  away  from  there.  I  do  not  say  that  I  went  away  in  any  sort 
of  a  hurry,  but  I  simply  went — that  is  sufficient.  I  went  out  at  the 
window,  and  I  carried  the  sash  along  with  me.  I  did  not  need  the  sash, 
but  it  was  handier  to  take  it  than  it  was  to  leave  it,  and  so  I  took  it.  I 
was  not  scared,  but  I  was  considerably  agitated. 


58  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

All  this  and  the  hundreds  of  pages  like  it  in  The  Innocents 
Abroad  and  Roughing  It  and  the  later  books  is  excellent  drollery, 
but  had  Mark  Twain  written  nothing  else  than  this  he  would  be  as 
dead  now  as  an  author  as  even  ' '  Doesticks. "  His  drollery  is 
best  in  the  work  that  lies  nearest  to  the  source  of  his  first  in 
spiration.  As  the  Western  days  faded  from  his  memory,  his 
comedy  became  more  and  more  forced,  until  it  could  reach  at 
last  the  inane  flatness  of  Adam's  Diary  and  flatter  still,  Eve's 
Diary. 

The  humor  that  lives,  however,  is  not  drollery;  it  must  be 
embodied  in  a  humorous  character  like  Falstaff,  for  instance, 
or  Don  Quixote.  The  most  of  Mark  Twain 's  fun  comes  from  ex 
aggerated  situations  with  no  attempt  at  characterization,  and 
therein  lies  his  weakness  as  a  humorist.  Huckleberry  Finn  and 
Colonel  Sellers  come  the  nearest  to  being  humorous  creations, 
but  Huckleberry  Finn  is  but  a  bit  of  genre,  the  eternal  bad  boy 
in  a  Pike  County  costume,  and  Colonel  Sellers  is  but  a  prelim- 
inary  study  toward  a  character,  a  shadowy  figure  that  we  feel 
constantly  to  be  on  the  point  of  jumping  into  greatness  without 
ever  actually  arriving.  Narrowly  as  he  may  have  missed  the 
mark  in  these  two  characters,  Mark  Twain  cannot  be  classed 
with  the  great  humorists. 


There  are  three  Mark  Twains:  there  is  Mark  Twain,  the  droll 
comedian,  who  wrote  for  the  masses  and  made  them  laugh ;  there 
is  Mark  Twain,  the  indignant  protester,  who  arose  ever  and 
anon  to  true  eloquence  in  his  denunciation  of  tyranny  and  pre 
tense  ;  and  there  is  Mark  Twain,  the  romancer,  who  in  his  boy 
hood  had  dreamed  by  the  great  river  and  who  later  caught  the 
romance  of  a  period  in  American  life.  The  masterpiece  of  the 
first  is  The  Jumping  Frog,  of  the  second  The  Man  that  Cor 
rupted  Hadleyburg,  and  of  the  third  Life  on  the  Mississippi  and 
Roughing  It. 

It  is  this  third  Mark  Twain  that  still  lives  and  that  will  con 
tinue  to  live  in  American  literature.  He  saw  with  distinctness 
a  unique  area  of  American  life.  As  the  brief  and  picturesque 
era  faded  away  he  caught  the  sunset  glory  of  it  and  embodied 
it  in  romance — the  steamboat  days  on  the  river  in  the  slavery 
era,  the  old  regime  in  the  South,  the  barbarism  of  the  Plains, 


MARK  TWAIN  99 

the  great  buffalo  herds,  the  wild  camps  in  the  gold  fields  of 
Nevada  and  California.  In  half  a  dozen  books:  Roughing  It, 
Life  on  the  Mississippi,  The  Gilded  Age  (  a  few  chapters  of  it), 
Tom  Sawyer,  Huckleberry  Finn,  Pudd'nhead  Wilson,  he  has 
done  work  that  can  never  be  done  again.  The  world  that  these 
books  depict  has  vanished  as  completely  as  the  Bagdad  of  Haroun 
al  Raschid.  Not  only  has  he  told  the  story  of  this  vanished 
world,  illustrating  it  with  descriptions  and  characterizations  that 
are  like  Flemish  portraits,  but  he  has  caught  and  held  the  spirit 
of  it,  and  he  has  thrown  over  it  all  the  nameless  glow  of  romance. 
It  is  as  golden  a  land  that  he  leads  us  through  as  any  we  may  find 
in  Scott,  and  yet  it  was  drawn  from  the  life  with  painstaking 
care.  Scott  and  Bulwer  and  Cooper  angered  Mark  Twain. 
They  were  careless  of  facts,  they  were  sentimental,  they  mis 
interpreted  the  spirit  of  the  times  they  depicted  and  the  men 
and  women  who  lived  in  them,  but  these  six  books  of  Mark  Twain 
may  be  placed  among  the  source  books  of  American  history.  No 
where  else  can  one  catch  so  truly  certain  phases  of  the  spirit  of 
the  mid-nineteenth  century  West.  Over  every  page  of  them  may 
be  written  those  words  from  the  preface  of  The  Innocents 
Abroad,  "I  am  sure  I  have  written  at  least  honestly,  whether 
wisely  or  not. ' ' 

The  books  are  six  chapters  of  autobiography.  Tom  Sawyer 
and  Huckleberry  Finn  are  recollections  of  that  boyhood  by  the 
river  after  so  long  a  time  had  elapsed  that  the  day-dreams  and 
boyish  imaginings  were  recorded  as  real  happenings;  Life  on 
the  Mississippi  records  that  romantic  adventure  of  his  young 
manhood  as  he  recalled  it  in  later  days  when  the  old  piloting 
era  had  vanished  like  a  dream  of  boyhood ;  The  Gilded  Age,  a  book 
of  glorious  fragments,  has  in  it  his  uncle  James  Lampton  drawn 
from  life  and  renamed  Colonel  Sellers;  Roughing  It  bubbles 
over  with  the  joy  and  the  high  spirits  and  the  excitement  of  those 
marvelous  days  when  the  author  and  the  West  were  young  to 
gether;  and  Pudd'nhead  Wilson  gives  the  tragedy  of  slavery 
as  it  passed  before  his  boyish  eyes.  These  books  and  The  Inno 
cents  Abroad  are  Mark  Twain's  contribution  to  the  library  of 
American  classics.  The  rest  of  his  enormously  large  output, 
despite  brilliant  passages  here  and  there,  does  not  greatly 
matter. 

They  are  not  artistic  books.     The  author  had  little  skill  in 


60  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

construction.  He  excelled  in  brilliant  dashes,  not  in  long-con- 
tinm-d  dVort.  He  was  his  own  Colonel  Sellers,  restless,  idealistic, 
(Quixotic.  What  he  did  he  did  with  his  whole  soul  without  re 
straint  or  sense  of  proportion.  There  is  in  all  he  wrote  a  lack 
of  refinement,  kept  at  a  minimum,  to  be  sure,  by  his  wife,  who 
tor  years  was  his  editor  and  severest  critic,  but  likely  at  any 
moment  to  crop  out.  His  books,  all  of  them,  are  monotones,  a 
running  series  of  episodes  and  descriptions  all  of  the  same  value, 
never  reaching  dramatic  climax.  The  episodes  themselves,  how 
ever,  are  told  with  graphic  intensity;  some  of  them  are  gems 
well-nigh  perfect.  Here  is  a  picture  of  the  famous  pony  express 
of  the  Plains : 

The  pony-rider  was  usually  a  little  bit  of  a  man,  brimful  of  spirit 
and  endurance.  No  matter  what  time  of  the  day  or  night  his  watch 
came  on,  and  no  matter  whether  it  was  winter  or  summer,  raining, 
snowing,  hailing,  or  sleeting,  or  whether  his  ''beat"  was  a  level  straight 
road  or  a  crazy  trail  over  mountain  crags  and  precipices,  or  whether  it 
led  through  peaceful  regions  that  swarmed  with  hostile  Indians,  he 
must  be  always  ready  to  leap  into  the  saddle  and  be  off  like  the  wind. 
He  rode  fifty  miles  without  stopping,  by  daylight,  moonlight,  starlight, 
or  through  the  blackness  of  darkness — just  as  it  happened.  He  rode  a 
splendid  horse  that  was  born  for  a  racer  and  fed  and  lodged  like  a 
gentleman ;  kept  him  at  his  utmost  speed  for  ten  miles,  and  then,  as  he 
came  crashing  up  to  the  station  where  stood  two  men  holding  fast  a 
fresh,  impatient  steed,  the  transfer  of  rider  and  mailbag  was  made  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  away  flew  the  eager  pair  and  were  out  of 
si.i:ht  before  the  spectator  could  hardly  get  the  ghost  of  a  look. 

\\V  had  had  a  consuming  desire,  from  the  beginning,  to  see  a  pony- 
rider,  but  somehow  or  other  all  that  had  passed  us  and  all  that  met  us 
managed  to  streak  by  in  the  night,  and  so  we  heard  only  a  whiz  and  a 
hail,  and  the  swift  phantom  of  the  desert  was  gone  before  we  could 
get  our  heads  out  of  the  windows.  But  now  we  were  expecting  one 
along  every  moment,  and  we  would  see  him  in  broad  daylight.  Pres 
ently  the  driver  exclaims: 

"Here  he  comes!" 

Every  neck  is  stretched  further,  and  every  eye  strained  wider.  Away 
across  the  endless  dead  level  of  the  prairie  a  black  speck  appears 
against  the  sky,  and  it  is  plain  that  it  moves.  Well,  I  should  think  s«. ! 
In  a  second  or  two  it  becomes  a  horse  and  rider,  rising  and  falling, 
rising  and  falling — sweeping  toward  us  nearer  and  nearer — growing 
Own  and  more  distinct,  more  and  more  sharply  defined — nearer  and 
still  nearer,  and  the  flutter  of  the  hoofs  comes  faintly  to  the  ear — 
another  instant  a  whoop  and  a  hurrah  from  our  upper  deck,  a  wave  of 
the  rider's  hand,  but  no  reply,  and  man  and  horse  hurst  |>.M  our  ex 
cited  faces,  and  go  winging  away  like  a  belated  fragment  of  a  storm. 


MARK  TWAIN  61 

The  steamboat  race  and  the  explosion  in  chapter  four  of 
The  Gilded  Age  have  few  equals  in  any  language  for  mere  pic 
turing  power.  He  deals  largely  with  the  out-of-doors.  His 
canvases  are  bounded  only  by  the  horizon:  the  Mississippi,  the 
great  Plains,  the  Rocky  Mountains,  Mono  Lake,  the  Alkali 
Deserts,  and  the  Sierras — he  has  handled  a  continent.  Only 
Joaquin  Miller  and  John  Muir  have  used  canvases  as  vast. 
Huckleberry  Finn's  floating  journey  down  the  river  on  his  raft 
has  in  it  something  of  the  spirit  of  The  Odyssey  and  Pilgrim's 
Progress  and  Don  Quixote.  Had  Mark  Twain's  constructive 
skill  and  his  ability  to  trace  the  growth  of  a  human  soul  been 
equal  to  his  picturing  power,  his  Defoe-like  command  of  detail 
and  situation,  and  his  mastery  of  phrase  and  of  narrative,  he 
might  have  said  the  last  word  in  American  fiction.  He  was  a 
product  of  his  section  and  of  his  education.  College  and  uni 
versity  would  have  made  of  him  an  artist  like  Holmes,  brilliant, 
refined,  and  messageless.  It  would  have  robbed  him  of  the  very 
fountain-head  of  his  power.  It  was  his  to  work  not  from  books 
but  from  life  itself,  to  teach  truth  and  genuineness  of  life,  to 
turn  the  eyes  of  America  from  the  romance  of  Europe  to  her 
own  romantic  past. 

VI 

If  Artemus  Ward  is  Touchstone,  Mark  Twain  is  Lear's  Fool. 
He  was  a  knightly  soul,  sensitive  and  serious,  a  nineteenth-cen 
tury  knight  errant  who  would  protect  the  weak  of  the  whole 
world  and  right  their  wrongs.  The  genuineness  and  honesty 
that  had  been  ground  into  his  soul  on  the  river  and  in  the  mines 
where  a  man  was  a  man  only  when  he  could  show  true  manliness, 
were  a  part  of  his  knightly  equipment.  When  financial  disaster 
came  to  him,  as  it  had  come  to  Scott,  through  no  fault  of  his  own, 
he  refused  to  repudiate  the  debt  as  he  might  have  done  with  no 
discredit  to  himself,  and,  though  old  age  was  upon  him,  he  set 
out  to  earn  by  his  own  efforts  the  whole  enormous  amount.  And 
he  discharged  the  debt  to  the  full.  He  had,  moreover,  the  true 
knight's  soul  of  romance.  The  Morte  d' Arthur  and  the  chroni 
cles  of  Joan  of  Arc,  his  favorite  reading,  contained  the  atmos 
phere  that  he  loved.  He  fain  would  have  given  his  generation 
"pure  literature,"  but  they  bade  him  back  to  his  cap  and  bells. 
Richardson,  as  late  as  1886,  classed  him  with  the  purveyors  of 


62  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

"rude  and  clownish  merriment"  and  advised  him  to  "make  hay 
while  the  sun  shines."  12 

So  he  jested  and  capered  while  his  heart  was  heavy  with  per 
sonal  sorrows  that  came  thick  upon  him  as  the  years  went  by, 
and  with  the  baseness  and  weakness  and  misery  of  humanity 
as  the  spectacle  passed  under  his  keen  observation.  Yet  in  it 
all  he  was  true  to  himself.  That  sentence  in  the  preface  tells 
the  whole  story:  "I  have  written  at  least  honestly."  His  own 
generation  bought  his  books  for  the  fun  in  them ;  their  children 
are  finding  now  that  their  fathers  bought  not,  as  they  sup 
posed,  clownish  ephemerae,  but  true  literature,  the  classics  of 
the  period. 

And  yet — strange  paradox! — it  was  the  cap  and  bells  that 
made  Mark  Twain  and  that  hastened  the  coming  of  the  new 
period  in  American  literature.  The  cap  and  bells  it  was  that 
made  him  known  in  every  hamlet  and  in  every  household  of 
America,  north  and  south  and  east  and  west,  and  in  all  lands 
across  all  oceans.  Only  Cooper  and  Mrs.  Stowe  of  all  our  Amer 
ican  authors  are  known  so  widely.  This  popularity  it  was  that 
gave  wings  to  the  first  all-American  literature  and  that  inspired 
a  new  school  of  American  writers.  After  Mark  Twain  American 
literature  was  no  longer  confined  to  Boston  and  its  environs;  it 
was  as  wide  as  the  continent  itself. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

MARK  TWAIN.  ( 1835-1910.)  The  Celebrated  Jumping  Frog  of  Calaveras 
County  and  Other  Sketches,  1867;  The  Innocents  Abroad,  1869;  Rou</liin<j 
It,  1872;  The  Gilded  Age  (with  C.  D.  Warner),  1S7.5.  aid  Times  on  the 
Mississippi  (Atlantic  Monthly),  1875;  Tom  Sawyer,  1876;  Life  on  the 
Mississippi,  in  book  form,  1882;  Huckleberry  Finn,  1884;  A  Connecticut 
Yankee  in  King  Arthur's  Court,  1889;  Pudd'nhead  Wilson,  1894}  I'crsonal 
Recollections  of  Joan  of  Arc,  1896;  Following  the  Equator,  1897;  Christian 
Science,  1907;  Writings  of  Mark  Twain,  25  vols.,  1!MO:  .!/;/  Mark  Twain, 
by  W.  D.  Howella,  1911;  Mark  Twain,  a  Biography,  by  Albert  Bigelow 
Paine,  1912. 

12  American  Literature,  i:  396,  521. 


CHAPTER  IV 

BRET    HARTE 

In  his  Chronological  Outlines  of  American  Literature,  Whit- 
comb  mentions  only  thirteen  American  novels  published  during 
the  seven  years  before  1870:  Taylor's  Hannah  Thurston,  John 
Godfrey's  Fortunes,  and  Story  of  Kennett;  Trowbridge's  The 
Three  Scouts;  Donald  G.  Mitchell's  Doctor  Johns;  Holmes 's 
The  Guardian  Angel;  Lanier's  Tiger-Lilies,  the  transition  novel 
of  the  decade  as  we  shall  see  later  in  our  study  of  Lanier ;  Louisa 
M.  Alcott's  Little  Women;  Beecher's  Norwood;  Elizabeth  Stuart 
Phelps's  The  Gates  Ajar;  Higginson's  Malbone;  Aldrich's  Story 
of  a  Bad  Boy;  and  Mrs.  Stowe's  Oldtown  Folks.  To  study  the 
list  is  to  realize  the  condition  of  American  fiction  during  the  six 
ties.  It  lacked  incisiveness  and  construction  and  definite  color; 
it  droned  and  it  preached. 

Before  pronouncing  the  decade  the  feeblest  period  in  Ameri 
can  fiction  since  the  early  twenties  of  the  century,  let  us  ex 
amine  the  most  lauded  novel  written  in  America  between  1860 
and  1870,  Elsie  Venner  (1861).  Strictly  speaking,  it  is  not  a 
novel  at  all:  it  is  another  Autocrat  volume,  chatty,  discursive, 
brilliant.  The  Brahmins,  sons  and  grandsons  of  ministers, 
might  enter  the  law,  medicine,  teaching,  literature,  the  lyceum 
lecture  field — they  never  ceased  to  preach.  New  England  for 
two  centuries  was  a  vast  pulpit  and  American  literature  dur- 
*ing  a  whole  period  was  written  on  sermon  paper.  "The  real 
aim  of  the  story,"  the  Autocrat  naively  observes  in  his  preface, 
"was  to  test  the  doctrine  of  'original  sin'  and  human  responsi 
bility."  He  is  in  no  hurry,  however.  We  read  four  chapters 
before  we  learn  even  the  heroine's  name.  A  novel  can  reason 
ably  be  expected  to  center  about  its  title  character:  Elsie  Ven- 
ner  speaks  seventeen  times  during  the  story,  and  eleven  of  these 
utterances  are  delivered  from  her  death- bed  at  the  close  of  the 
book.  There  is  no  growth  in  character,  no  gradual  moving  of 

63 


64  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

events  to  a  culmination,  no  clear  picture  even  of  the  central  fig- 
uiv.  Elsie  is  a  mere  case:  the  book,  so  far  as  she  is  concerned, 
is  the  record  of  a  clinic.  But  even  the  clinic  is  not  suffered  to 
move  uninterruptedly.  Digressions  are  as  frequent  as  even  in 
the  Autocrat  papers.  A  widow  is  introduced  for  no  apparent 
reason,  studied  for  a  chapter,  and  then  dropped  from  the  nar 
rative.  We  never  feel  like  one  who  has  lost  himself  for  a  time 
in  the  life  of  another  in  a  new  world  under  new  skies;  we  feel 
railnT  like  one  who  is  being  personally  conducted  through  New 
England  by  a  skilful  guide.  Note  this  partial  prospectus  of 
what  he  has  to  show:  Newburyport,  Portsmouth,  Portland, 
caste  in  New  England,  rural  schools,  Northampton  and  Mt. 
Holyoke,  mountain  vegetation,  rattlesnakes  in  Massachusetts, 
the  New  England  mansion  house,  school  compositions,  the  old 
type  of  meeting  house,  varieties  of  school  girls,  the  old-time 
India  merchant,  oysters  in  New  England,  hired  help,  colonial 
chimneys,  young  ladies'  seminaries,  the  hemlock  tree.  The  topics 
are  interesting  ones  and  they  are  brilliantly  treated,  often  at 
length,  but  in  a  novel,  even  one  written  by  Dr.  Holmes,  such 
things  are  "lumber."  The  novel  is  typical  of  the  fiction  of  the 
era.  It  is  discursive,  loosely  constructed,  vague  in  its  characteri 
zation,  and  lacking  in  cumulative  force. 

It  is  significant  that  the  magazines  of  the  period  had  very 
little  use  for  the  native  product.  Between  1864  and  1870, 
Harper's  Magazine  alone  published  no  fewer  than  ten  long  serials 
by  English  novelists:  Denis  Duval  by  Thackeray;  The  Small 
House  at  Allington  by  Trollope ;  Our  Mutual  Friend  by  Dickens ; 
The  Unkind  Word,  Woman's  Kingdom,  and  A  Brave  Lady  by 
Dinah  Mulock  Craik;  Armadale  by  Wilkie  Collins;  My  Enemy's 
Daughter  by  Justin  M'Carthy;  Anteros  by  the  Author  of  Guy 
LMngttone  [G.  A.  Lawrence]  ;  and  Anne  Furness  by  the  Author 
of  Mabel's  Progress  [Mrs.  T.  A.  Trollope].  Even  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  left  its  New  England  group  of  producers  to  publish 
Charles  Readers  Griffith  Gaunt  in  twelve  instalments.  In  1871 
Scribner's  Monthly  began  the  prospectus  of  its  second  volume 
with  this  announcement: 

Our  contributors  are  among  the  best  who  write  in  the  English  Ian- 

MacDonald — "the   best   of   living   story-writers" — will 

continue  his  beautiful  story,  entitled  Wilfred  Cumbermede,  throughout 

the  volume.     We  have  the  refusal  of  all  Hans  Christian  Andersen's 


BRET  HARTE  65 

stories  at  the  hand  of  his  best  translator,  Mr.  Horace  E.  Scudder.  We 
have  engaged  the  pen  of  Miss  Thackeray,  now  regarded  as  the  finest 
story-writer  among  the  gifted  women  of  Great  Britain — not  even  ex 
cepting  George  Eliot.  Mrs.  Oliphant  has  written  especially  for  us  an 
exquisitely  characteristic  story,  etc. 

The  feebleness  of  the  period  was  understood  even  at  the  time. 
Charles  Eliot  Norton  wrote  Lowell  in  1874:  "  There  is  not  much 
in  the  magazine  [Atlantic]  that  is  likely  to  be  read  twice  save 
by  its  writers,  and  this  is  what  the  great  public  likes.  There 
must  be  a  revival  of  letters  in  America,  if  literature  as  an  art  is 
not  to  become  extinct.  You  should  hear  Godkin  express  himself 
in  private  on  this  topic. ' '  x 

No  wonder  that  the  book-reviewer  of  Harper's  Magazine  for 
May,  1870,  with  nothing  better  before  him  than  Miss  Van  Kort- 
land,  Anonymous;  Hedged  In,  by  Miss  Phelps;  and  Askaros 
Kassis,  by  DeLeon,  should  have  begun  his  review,  "We  are  so 
weary  of  depending  on  England,  France,  and  Germany  for  fic 
tion,  and  so  hungry  for  some  genuine  American  romance,  that  we 
are  not  inclined  to  read  very  critically  the  three  characteristic 
American  novels  which  lie  on  our  table. ' '  No  wonder  that  when 
Harte's  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  in  the  Overland  Monthly 
was  read  in  the  Atlantic  office,  Fields  sent  by  return  mail  a  re 
quest  "upon  the  most  flattering  terms"  for  another  story  like  it, 
and  that  the  same  mail  brought  also  papers  and  reviews  "wel 
coming  the  little  foundling  of  California  literature  with  an  en 
thusiasm  that  half  frightened  its  author. ' ' 2 

The  new  American  fiction  began  with  Bret  Harte. 


To  turn  from  Mark  Twain  to  Bret  Harte  is  like  turning  from 
the  great  river  on  a  summer  night,  fragrant  and  star-lit,  to  the 
glamour  and  unreality  of  the  city  theater.     No  contrast  could  be 
more  striking.     Francis  Brett  Harte,  born  August  25,  1839,  was  | 
preeminently  a  man  of  the  East  and  preeminently  also  a  man 
of  the  city.     He  was  born  at  Albany,  New  York,  he  spent  his 
childhood   in    Providence,    Rhode    Island,    in    Philadelphia,    in  , 
Lowell,    Massachusetts,   in   Boston   and   other   places,    and   the  { 
formative  years  between  nine  and  eighteen  he  passed  in  Brooklyn 

1  Letters  of  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  ii :   36. 

2  Harte.     Introduction  to  the  Collected  Works. 


66  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

and  New  York  City.  He  lived  all  his  young  life  in  an  atmos 
phere  of  culture.  His  father,  a  Union  College  man,  a  scholar, 
and  a  teacher  who  knew  French  and  Spanish  and  Italian,  Latin 
and  Greek,  had  accumulated  a  large  and  well-selected  library  in 
which  the  boy,  frail  and  sensitive,  too  frail  in  his  early  years 
to  attend  school,  spent  much  of  his  childhood,  reading  Shake 
speare  and  Froissart  at  six  and  diaries  Dickens  at  seven.  His 
mother,  a  woman  of  culture,  directed  his  reading,  and  criticized 
with  discernment  his  earliest  attempts  at  poetry.  It  was  the 
training  school  for  a  poet,  a  Bryant  or  a  Longfellow,  who  should 
look  to  tin-  older  art  for  models  and  be  inspired  with  the  dream 
that  had  sent  Irving  and  Willis  and  Taylor  as  pilgrims  to  the 
holy  lands  of  literature  across  the  sea. 

The  turning  point  in  Harte's  life  came  in  1854,  when  he  was 
in  his  fifteenth  year.  His  biographer,  Merwin,  tells  the  story : 

In  1853  his  mother  [who  had  been  a  widow  for  nine  years]  went  to 
California  with  a  party  of  relatives  and  friends,  in  order  to  make  her 
home  there  with  her  elder  son,  Henry.  She  had  intended  to  take  with 
her  the  other  two  children,  Margaret  and  Francis  Brett;  but  as  the 
daughter  was  in  school,  she  left  the  two  behind  for  a  few  months,  and 
they  followed  in  February,  1854.  They  traveled  by  the  Nicaragua 
route,  and  after  a  long,  tiresome,  but  uneventful  journey,  landed  safely 
in  San  Francisco.3 

The  mother  must  have  remarried  shortly  after  her  arrival  in 
California,  for  two  sentences  later  on  the  biographer  records 
that  "They  went  the  next  morning  to  Oakland  across  the  Bay, 
where  their  mother  and  her  second  husband,  Colonel  Andrew 
Williams,  were  living. " 

The  young  poet  had  been  transplanted  into  new  and  strange 
soil  and  he  took  root  slowly.  During  the  next  year,  making 
his  home  with  his  mother  at  Oakland,  he  attempted  to  teach 
school  and  then  to  serve  as  an  apothecary's  assistant,  but  he 
made  little  headway  in  either  profession.  His  heart  was  far 
away  from  the  rough,  new  land  that  he  had  entered.  He  wrote 
poems  and  stories  and  sketches  and  sent  them  to  the  Eastern 
magazines;  he  read  interminably,  and  dreamed  of  literature  just 
as  Aldrich  and  Timrod  and  Ilayne  and  Stedman  and  Stoddard 
were  even  then  dreaming  of  it  on  the  other  side  of  the  conti 
nent. 

»  Life  of  Bret  Ilarte,  17. 


BRET  HARTE  67 

The  next  two  years  of  his  life,  despite  the  efforts  of  his  bi 
ographers,  are  vague  and  conjectural.  It  was  his  wander 
period.  He  began  as  tutor  in  a  private  family  in  Humboldt 
County,  then,  according  to  Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  "he  was 
an  express  messenger  in  the  mountains  when  the  office  was  the 
target  of  every  lawless  rifle  in  the  territory ;  he  was  glutted  with 
adventurous  experiences."4  Not  for  long,  however.  He  seems  * 
to  have  spent  the  rest  of  the  two  years — prosaic  anticlimax! — 
as  a  type-setter  on  the  Humboldt  Times  and  the  Northern  Cali-k 
fornia,  as  a  teacher  in  the  town  of  Union,  and  as  a  drug  clerk.! 
That  he  ever  was  a  miner  is  gravely  to  be  doubted.  He  had 
small  taste  for  roughing  it  and  little  sympathy  with  the  typical 
California  life  of  the  times.  He  was  a  poet,  rather,  a  man  of 
the  city,  a  reader  of  romance,  how  wide  and  attentive  a  reader 
we  may  judge  from  Condensed  Novels  which  he  soon  after  began 
to  contribute  to  the  San  Francisco  press. 

The  events  in  his  life  during  the  next  fourteen  years  in  San 
Francisco  are  quickly  summarized.  For  the  greater  part  of  it  he  * 
was  connected  with  the  Golden  Era,  first  as  a  type-setter  and 
later  as  an  editor  and  contributor.  In  1862  he  was  married. 
Two  years  later  he  was  appointed  Secretary  of  the  California 
Mint,  an  office  that  allowed  him  abundant  time  for  literary 
work.  He  was  connected  with  Webb's  brilliant  and  short-lived 
California*,  first  as  contributor  and  later  as  editor,  and  in  1868, 
when  the  Overland  Monthly,  which  was  to  be  the  Atlantic  of 
Western  America,  was  founded,  he  was  made  the  editor.  The 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  in  the  second  number  and  Plain  Lan 
guage  from  Truthful  James  in  the  September,  1870,  number, 
brought  him  a  popularity  that  in  suddenness  and  extent  had  had 
no  precedent  in  America,  save  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Stowe  and 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  The  enormous  applause  intoxicated  him; 
California  became  too  narrow  and  provincial;  and  in  1871  he 
left  it,  joyous  as  one  who  is  returning  home  after  long  exile. 

II 

If  we  may  trust  Harte's  own  statement,  made,  it  must  be 
remembered,  in  the  retrospect  of  later  years,  he  set  out  delib 
erately  to  add  a  new  province  to  American  literature.  During 

*  Exits  and  Entrances,  241. 


68  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

!).'•  period  between  1862  and  1867,  he  wrote,  according  to  his 
own  statement,  "The  Society  upon  the  Stanislaus  and  The  Story 
of  M'liss — the  first  a  dialectical  poem,  the  second  a  California 
romance — his  first  efforts  toward  indicating  a  peculiarly  charac 
teristic  Western  American  literature.  He  would  like  to  offer 
these  facts  as  evidence  of  his  very  early,  half-boyish,  but  very  en 
thusiastic  belief  in  such  a  possibility — a  belief  which  never  de 
serted  him,  and  which,  a  few  years  later,  from  the  better  known 
pages  of  the  Overland  Monthly,  he  was  able  to  demonstrate  to  a 
larger  and  more  cosmopolitan  audience  in  the  story  of  The 
Liu:k  of  Roaring  Camp,  and  the  poem  of  The  Heathen  Chinee." 5 

But  the  poem  and  the  romance  were  not  his  first  efforts  toward 
a  peculiarly  characteristic  Western  American  literature.  His 
first  vision  of  the  literary  possibilities  of  the  region  had  been  in 
spired  by  Irving,  and  he  wrote  in  the  Sketch  Book  manner  dur 
ing  the  greater  part  of  his  seventeen  years  upon  the  Pacific  Coast. 
Behind  the  California  of  the  gold  and  the  excitement  lay  three 
hundred  years  of  an  old  Spanish  civilization.  What  Irving  had 
done  for  the  Hudson  why  could  he  not  do  for  the  Mission  lands 
and  the  Spanish  occupation,  "that  glorious  Indian  summer  of 
California  history,  around  which  so  much  poetical  haze  still  lin 
gers — that  bland,  indolent  autumn  of  Spanish  rule,  so  soon  to 
be  followed  by  the  wintry  storms  of  Mexican  independence  and 
the  reviving  springs  of  American  conquest"? 6  It  was  a  vision 
worthy  of  a  Hawthorne.  That  it  possessed  him  for  years  and 
was  abandoned  with  reluctance  is  evident  to  one  who  examines 
his  early  work. 

He  voiced  it  in  The  Angelus,  Heard  at  the  Mission  Dolores, 
1868,  in  the  same  volume  of  the  Overland  Monthly  that  con 
tained  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp: 

Borne  on  the  swell  of  your  long  waves  receding, 

I  touch  the  further  Past — 
I  see  the  dying  glow  of  Spanish  glory, 

The  sunset  dream  and  last. 

Before  me  rise  the  dome-shaped  Mission  towers; 

The  white  Presidio; 
The  swart  commander  in  his  leathern  jerkin, 

Tin-  priest   in  stole  of  snow. 

6  Harte'H  General  Introduction  to  his  Works, 
o  The  Right  Eye  of  the  Commander. 


BRET  HARTE  69 

Once  more  I  see  Portata's  cross  uplifting 

Above  the  setting  sun; 
And  past  the  headland,  northward,  slowly  drifting 

The  freighted  galleon. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  his  Legend  of  Monte  del  Diablo, 
a  careful  Irvingesque  romance,  appeared  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  as  early  as  1863.  During  the  same  period  he  wrote 
The  Right  Eye  of  the  Commander,  The  Legend  of  Devil's  Point, 
The  Adventure  of  Padre  Viventio,  and  many  short  pieces,  enough, 
indeed,  to  make  up  a  volume  the  size  of  The  Sketch  Book. 

Despite  its  echoes  of  Irving,  it  is  significant  work.  Harte 
was  the  first  to  catch  sight  of  a  whole  vast  field  of  American 
romance.  Again  and  again  he  recurs  to  it  in  his  later  poetry 
and  prose ;  notably  in  Concepcion  de  Arguello  and  its  prose  ver 
sion  on  page  191  of  the  first  volume  of  the  Overland  Monthly,  A 
Convert  of  the  Mission,  The  Story  of  a  Mine,  In  the  Carquinez 
Woods,  and  in  Gabriel  Conroy,  that  chaotic  book  which  has  in  it 
the  materials  for  the  greatest  of  American  romances.  When 
ever  he  touches  this  old  Spanish  land  he  throws  over  it  the  mel 
low  Washington  Irving  glow  that  had  so  thrilled  him  in  his 
earlier  years,  and  he  writes  with  power.  The  Spanish  part  of 
Gabriel  Conroy  is  exquisite ;  its  atmosphere  is  faultless : 

If  there  was  a  spot  on  earth  of  which  the  usual  dead  monotony  of 
the  California  seasons  seemed  a  perfectly  consistent  and  natural  ex 
pression,  that  spot  was  the  ancient  and  time-honored  pueblo  and  Mis 
sion  of  the  blessed  St.  Anthony.  The  changeless,  cloudless,  expression 
less  skies  of  the  summer  seemed  to  symbolize  that  aristocratic  conserva 
tism  which  expelled  all  innovation  and  was  its  distinguishing  mark.  .  .  . 

As  he  drew  rein  in  the  court-yard  of  the  first  large  adobe  dwelling, 
and  received  the  grave  welcome  of  a  strange  but  kindly  face,  he  saw 
around  him  everywhere  the  past  unchanged.  The  sun  shone  as  brightly 
and  fiercely  on  the  long  red  tiles  of  the  low  roofs,  that  looked  as  if 
they  had  been  thatched  with  longitudinal  slips  of  cinnamon,  even  as  it 
had  shone  for  the  last  hundred  years;  the  gaunt  wolf-like  dogs  ran  out 
and  barked  at  him  as  their  fathers  and  mothers  had  barked  at  the  pre 
ceding  stranger  of  twenty  years  before.  There  were  the  few  wild,  half- 
broken  mustangs  tethered  by  strong  riatas  before  the  veranda  of  the 
long  low  Fonda,  with  the  sunlight  glittering  on  their  silver  trappings; 
there  were  the  broad,  blank  expanses  of  whitewashed  adobe  wall,  as 
barren  and  guiltless  of  record  as  the  uneventful  days,  as  monotonous 
and  expressionless  as  the  staring  sky  above;  there  were  the  white, 
dome-shaped  towers  of  the  Mission  rising  above  the  green  of  olives  and 
pear  trees,  twisted,  gnarled  and  knotted  with  the  rheumatism  of  age. 


70  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

.  .  .  The  steamers  that  crept  slowly  up  the  darkening  roast  line  were 
something  remote,  unreal,  and  phantasmal;  since  the  Philippine  galleon 
had  left  its  bleached  and  broken  ribs  in  the  sand  in  1640,  no  vessel  had, 
in  tlu»  memory  of  man,  dropped  anchor  in  the  open  roadstead  below  the 
curving  Point  of  Pines. 


and  fragmentary  as  these  Spanish  sketches  are,  they 
nevertheless  opened  the  way  for  a  new  school  of  American  ro 
mance. 

Ill 

Harte's  first  story  with  other  than  a  legendary  theme  was 
M'liss,  written  for  the  Golden  Era  sometime  before  1867.  For 
the  student  of  his  literary  art  it  is  the  most  important  of  all  his 
writings,  especially  important  because  of  the  revision  which  he 
made  of  it  later  after  he  had  evolved  his  final  manner.  It  is 
transition  work.  The  backgrounds  are  traced  in  with  Irving- 
like  care;  the  character  of  the  schoolmaster  is  done  with  artistic 
restraint  and  certainty  of  touch.  M'liss  is  exquisitely  handled. 
There  is  nothing  better  in  all  his  work  than  this  study  of  the 
fiery,  jealous  little  heart  of  the  neglected  child.  It  is  not  neces- 
sarijy  a  California  story;  it  could  have  happened  as  well  even 
in  New  England.  It  is  not  genre  work,  not  mere  exploiting 
of  local  oddities  ;  it  is  worked  out  in  life  itself,  and  it  strikes  the 
universal  human  chord  that  brings  it  into  the  realm  of  true  art. 

But  even  in  the  earlier  version  of  the  story  there  are  false 
notes.  The  names  of  the  characters  strike  us  as  unusual: 
M'liss,  McSnagley,  Morpher,  Clytemnestra,  Kerg,  Aristides,  Cel- 
lerstina.  We  feel  that  the  author  is  straining  for  the  unusual; 
and  we  feel  it  more  when  the  Rev.  Joshua  McSnagley  comes  upon 
the  scene  : 

The  reverend  gentleman  was  glad  to  see  him.  Moreover,  he  observed 
that  the  master  was  looking  "peartish,"  and  hoped  he  had  got  over  the 
"neuralgy"  and  "rheumatiz."  He  himself  had  been  troubled  with  the 
dumb  "ager"  since  last  conference.  But  he  had  learned  to  Drastic  and 
pray."  Pausing  a  moment  to  enable  the  master  to  write  his  certain 
method  of  curing  the  dumb  "ager"  upon  the  book  and  volume  <>f  his 
brain,  Mr.  McSnagley  proceeded  to  inquire  after  Sister  Morpher. 
"She  is  an  adornment  to  Christewanity,  and  has  a  likely  growin'  young 
family,"  added  Mr.  McSnagley. 

Somehow  it  does  not  ring  true.  The  author  is  thinking  of 
the  effect  he  hopes  to  produce.  He  must  fill  his  reader  with 


BRET  HARTE  71 

wonder.  "A  saintly  Raphael-face,  with  blond  beard  and  soft 
blue  eyes,  belonging  to  the  biggest  scamp  in  the  diggings,  turned 
toward  the  child  and  whispered,  'Stick  to  it,  M'liss.'  3  That 
sentence  is  the  key  to  the  author 's  later  manner.  ' '  Life  in  Cali 
fornia  is  a  paradox,"  he  seems  everywhere  to  say,  "just  look  at 
this." 

The  transition  from  F.  B.  Harte  the  poet  and  romancer  to  Bret 
Harte  the  paradox  maker  and  showman  came  through  Dickens. 
It  was  the  Dickens  era  in  America.  The  great  novelist  had  made 
his  second  tour  of  the  country  between  November,  1867,  and 
April,  1868,  and  his  journeyings  had  been  a  triumphal  progress. 
All  classes  everywhere  were  reading  his  books,  and  great  numbers 
knew  them  literally  by  heart.  Dickens  wrote  home  from  Wash 
ington,  "Mr.  Secretary  Staunton  (War  Minister)  was  here.  .  .  . 
He  is  acquainted  with  the  minutest  details  of  my  books.  Give 
him  a  passage  anywhere  and  he  will  instantly  cap  it  and  go  on 
with  the  context.  .  .  .  Never  went  to  sleep  at  night  without  first 
reading  something  from  my  books  which  were  always  with 
him. ' ' 7  The  same  could  have  been  said  of  Harte  himself.  Says 
Pemberton,  "His  knowledge  of  his  [Dickens 's]  books  was  un 
rivaled.  ...  He  could  have  passed  Charles  Calverley's  famous 
Pickwick  Examination  Paper  with  honors."8  Everybody  knew 
his  Dickens;  for  a  generation  men  could  not  speak  of  the  man 
with  moderation.  Even  a  critic  like  Moncure  D.  Conway  could 
say  of  Oliver  Twist  and  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop:  "To  this  day 
I  cannot  help  suspecting  the  sanity  of  any  one  who  does  not  con 
cede  that  they  are  the  two  best  novels  ever  written.'5  9  The 
death  of  Dickens  in  1870  let  loose  all  over  America  a  flood  of 
eulogy  and  increased  enormously  the  already  great  sales  of  his 
books. 

The  art  of  Dickens  was  peculiar.  He  had  found  in  the  lower 
strata  of  the  population  of  London,  that  vast  settling  pool  of  Great 
Britain,  a  society  made  up  of  many  sharply  individualized  per 
sonalities,  abnormalities  in  body  and  soul,  results  of  the  peculiar 
inflexible  characteristics  of  the  English  race  and  their  hard  and 
fast  social  distinctions.  From  fragments  of  this  lower  London 
Dickens  built  him  a  world  of  his  own  and  peopled  it  with  com- 

f  Letters  of  Charles  Dickens,  667. 
s  The  Life  of  Bret  Harte,  166. 
9  Harper's  Magazine,  41:610. 


72  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

posite  creations  such  as  one  finds  nowhere  save  in  the  folklore 
of  a  primitive  people — creatures  as  strange  as  their  names,  Quilp, 
Scrooge,  Cratchit,  Squeers,  Snagsby.  So  tremendously  did  he  be 
lieve  in  them,  that  we  believe  in  them  ourselves.  So  overflowing 
was  he  with  high  spirits  and  boisterous  laughter  that  before  we 
realize  it  we  have  surrendered  completely  and  are  living  hilari 
ously  not  in  a  land  of  actual  men  and  women,  but  in  the  world 
that  never  was  and  never  can  be  save  in  the  books  of  Dickens. 
He  never  analyzed,  he  never  sought  the  heart  of  things,  or  got 
at  all  below  the  surface  of  his  characters ;  he  was  content  simply 
to  exhibit  his  marvelous  creations  with  all  their  ludicrous  incon 
gruities,  and  the  show  is  so  entertaining  and  the  showman  ex 
hibits  it  with  such  zest,  such  joyous  abandon,  that  we  stand  like 
children  and  lose  ourselves  in  wonder  and  enjoyment. 

We  can  see  now  that  the  time  was  ripe  for  a  California 
Dickens.  There  was  a  prepared  audience — the  whole  nation  was 
reading  the  great  novelist  of  the  people.  California,  moreover, 
was  in  the  fierce  light  of  the  gold  excitement — anything  that 
came  from  it  would  find  eager  readers.  It  was  a  veritable 
Dickens  land,  more  full  of  strange  types  than  even  the  slums  of 
London:  Pikes,  Greasers,  Yankees,  Chinese,  gamblers,  adven 
turers  from  all  the  wild  places  of  the  world,  desperadoes,  soldiers 
of  fortune,  restless  seekers  for  excitement  and  gold.  Everything 
was  ready.  Harte  doubtless  blundered  into  his  success;  doubt 
less  he  did  not  reason  about  the  matter  at  all,  yet  the  result  re 
mains  the  same :  he  came  at  the  precise  moment  with  the  precise 
•t  form  of  literature  that  the  world  was  most  sure  to  accept.  It 
came  about  as  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world.  Saturated 
with  Dickens  as  he  had  been  from  his  childhood,  it  is  not  strange 
that  this  motley  society  and  its  amazing  surroundings  should 
have  appealed  to  him  from  the  objective  and  the  picturesque 
side ;  it  is  not  strange  that,  even  as  did  Dickens,  he  should  have 
selected  types  and  heightened  them  and  peopled  a  new  world 
with  them ;  it  is  not  strange  that  he  should  have  given  these  types 
Dickens-like  names:  Higgles,  McCorkle,  Culpepper  Starbottle, 
Calhoun  Bungstarter,  Fagg,  Twinkler,  Rattler,  Mixer,  Stubbs, 
Nibbles.  His  work  is  redolent  of  Dickens.  Sometimes  we  seem 
to  be  reading  a  clever  parody  after  the  fashion  of  the  Condensed 
Novels,  as  for  instance  this  from  The  Romance  of  Madrono  Hol 
low: 


BRET  HAETE  73 

There  was  not  much  to  hear.  The  hat  was  saying  to  the  ribbons  that 
it  was  a  fine  night,  and  remarking  generally  upon  the  clear  outline  of 
the  Sierras  against  the  blue-black  sky.  The  ribbons,  it  so  appeared, 
had  admired  this  all  the  way  home,  and  asked  the  hat  if  it  had  ever 
seen  anything  half  so  lovely  as  the  moonlight  on  the  summit  ?  The 
hat  never  had ;  it  recalled  some  lovely  nights  in  the  South  in  Alabama 
("in  the  South  in  Ahlabahm"  was  the  way  the  old  man  had  heard  it), 
but  then  there  were  other  things  that  made  the  night  seem  so  pleasant. 
The  ribbons  could  not  possibly  conceive  what  the  hat  could  be  thinking 
about.  At  this  point  there  was  a  pause,  of  which  Mr.  Folinsbee  availed 
himself  to  walk  very  grimly  and  craunchingly  down  the  gravel  walk 
toward  the  gate.  Then  the  hat  was  lifted,  and  disappeared  in  the 
shadow,  and  Mr.  Folinsbee  confronted  only  the  half-foolish,  half -mis 
chievous,  but  wholly  pretty  face  of  his  daughter. 

M'liss  is  full  of  such  echoes.  A  little  later  than  M'liss,  when 
he  was  required  to  furnish  the  Overland  with  a  distinctly  Cali- 
fornian  story,  he  set  about  examining  his  field  precisely  as 
Dickens  would  have  done.  ''What  are  some  of  the  most  unusual 
phases  of  this  unique  epoch?"  he  asked  himself.  During  a 
short  period  women  and  children  were  rare  in  the  remote  mining 
districts.  What  would  result  if  a  baby  were  born  in  one  of  the 
roughest  and  most  masculine  of  the  camps?  It  is  not  hard  to 
conjecture  how  Dickens  would  have  handled  the  problem;  The 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  is  Harte's  solution.  The  situation  and 
the  characters  are  both  unique.  They  would  have  been  impos 
sible  in  any  other  place  or  at  any  other  moment  in  the  world's 
history.  So  with  all  of  Harte  's  later  stories :  undoubtedly  there 
may  have  been  a  Roaring  Camp  and  undoubtedly  there  were 
Cherokee  Sals  and  Kentucks,  undoubtedly  the  gold  rush  devel 
oped  here  and  there  Jack  Hamlins  and  Tennessees  and  Uncle 
Billys  and  Yuba  Bills.  The  weakness  of  Harte  is  that  he  takes 
these  and  peoples  California  with  them.  Like  Dickens,  he  selects 
a  few  picturesque  and  grotesque  exceptions  and  makes  of  them  a 
whole  social  system. 

Harte  had  nothing  of  the  earnestness  and  the  sincerity  of  the 
older  master ;  after  a  time  he  outgrew  his  manner,  and  evolved  a 
style  of  his  own — compressed,  rapid,  picturesque ;  but  this  early 
point  of  view  he  never  changed.  He  sought  ever  for  the  startling 
and  the  dramatic  and  he  elaborated  the  outside  of  it  with  care. 
He  studied  the  map  of  California  for  picturesque  names,  just 
as  Dickens  studied  the  street  signs  of  London.  He  passed  by 
the  common  materials  of  human  life  to  exhibit  tha  strange 


74  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

phenomena  of  one  single  accidental  moment  in  a  corner  of 
America. 

Once  he  had  begun,  however,  there  was  no  possibility  of  stop 
ping.  The  people  demanded  work  like  The  Luck  of  Roaring 
Camp  and  would  accept  nothing  else.  It  is  pathetic  to  see  him 
during  the  early  years  of  his  great  fame,  trying  to  impress  upon 
the  reading  public  that  he  is  a  poet  after  the  old  definition  of 
the  word.  The  Atlantic  had  paid  him  $10,000  to  write  for  a 
year  work  like  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp.  He  gave  four 
stories,  and  he  gave  also  five  careful  poems  of  the  Longfellow- 
NY  hitticr  type.  By  1873  he  had  put  forth  no  fewer  than  fourteen 
books,  nine  of  them  being  poems  or  collections  of  his  poetry.  In 
vain.  The  public  ordered  him  back  to  the  mines  and  camps  that 
even  then  were  as  obsolete  as  the  pony  express  across  the  Plains. 

Despite  his  biographers,  the  latter  part  of  his  life  is  full  of 
mystery.  After  seven  years  of  literary  work  in  New  York  City, 
he  went  in  1878  as  consul  to  Crefeld,  Germany.  Two  years  later 
he  was  transferred  to  Glasgow,  Scotland,  where  he  remained  for 
five  years.  The  rest  of  his  life  he  spent  in  London,  writing  year 
after  year  new  books  of  California  stories.  He  never  returned 
to  America;  he  was  estranged  from  his  family;  he  seemed  to 
wish  to  sever  himself  entirely  from  all  that  had  to  do  with  his 
earlier  life.  He  died  May  5,  1902,  and  was  buried  in  Frimby 
churchyard,  in  Surrey. 

IV 

A  novelist  must  rise  or  fall  with  his  characters.  "What  of 
Harte  ?  First  of  all  we  must  observe  that  he  makes  no  attempts 
at  character  development.  Each  personage  introduced  is  the 
same  at  the  close  of  the  story  as  at  the  opening.  He  has  no  fully 
,  studied  character :  we  have  a  burning  moment,  a  flashlight 
glimpse — intense,  paradoxical,  startling,  then  no  more.  We 
never  see  the  person  again.  The  name  may  appear  in  later 
sketches,  but  it  never  designates  the  same  man.  Colonel  Star- 
bottle  is  consistent  from  story  to  story  only  in  make-up,  in  stage 
"business,"  and  the  well  known  "gags" — as,  for  instance,  a  suc 
cession  of  phrases  qualified  by  the  adjective  "blank."  "Yuba 
Bill"  is  Harte 's  synonym  for  stage  driver,  "Jack  Hamlin"  for 
gambler.  We  have  a  feeling  constantly  that  the  characters  are 
brought  in  simply  to  excite  wonder.  Gabriel  Conroy  devotes  his 


BRET  HARTE  75 

life  for  years  to  the  finding  of  his  sister  Grace.  He  leaves  his 
wife  to  search  for  her ;  he  can  think  of  nothing  else ;  yet  when  at 
length  he  does  find  her  among  the  witnesses  in  a  courtroom  he 
takes  it  as  a  mere  commonplace.  A  moment  later,  however, 
when  told  that  his  wife,  for  whom  we  know  he  cares  nothing  at 
all,  has  given  birth  to  a  son,  he  falls  headlong  in  a  swoon. 

His  characters  may  perhaps  be  true  to  facts;  he  may  be  able 
to  give  the  prototype  in  every  case ;  and  yet  we  are  not  convinced. 
The  stories  told  by  the  college  freshman  at  home  during  his  first 
Christmas  vacation  may  all  be  true,  and  yet  they  may  give  a 
very  false  idea  of  college  life  in  its  entirety.  So  it  is  with  Harte. 
The  very  year  that  he  landed  in  California  a  procession  of  one 
thousand  children,  each  child  with  a  flower  in  his  hand,  marched 
one  day  in  San  Francisco.  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  gives  no 
such  impression.  In  all  save  the  remotest  camps  there  were 
churches  and  worshipers,  yet  who  would  suspect  it  from  Harte 's 
tales  ?  California  has  never  accepted  Harte 's  picture  of  its  life, 
just  as  the  South  has  never  accepted  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  It  is 
not  fair  to  picture  an  era  simply  by  dwelling  on  its  exceptions 
and  its  grotesque  possibilities.  Art  must  rest  upon  the  whole 
truth,  not  upon  half  truths. 

The  truth  is  that  the  man  had  no  deep  and  abiding  philosophy 
of  life ;  he  had  indeed  no  philosophy  at  all.  In  the  words  of  his 
discerning  biographer,  Merwin, 

There  was  a  want  of  background,  both  intellectual  and  moral,  in  his 
nature.  He  was  an  observer,  not  a  thinker,  and  his  genius  was  shown 
only  as  he  lived  in  the  life  of  others.  Even  his  poetry  is  dramatic,  not 
lyric.  It  was  very  seldom  that  Bret  Harte,  in  his  tales  or  elsewhere, 
advanced  any  abstract  sentiment  or  idea;  he  was  concerned  only  with 
the  concrete ;  and  it  is  noticeable  that  when  he  does  venture  to  lay  down 
a  general  principle,  it  fails  to  bear  the  impress  of  real  conviction.  The 
note  of  sincerity  is  wanting.10 

The  fact  that  his  rascals  in  a  crisis  often  do  deeds  of  sublime 
heroism  must  not  deceive  us,  despite  the  author's  protestations 
of  a  great  moral  purpose  underlying  his  work. 

Without  claiming1  to  be  a  religious  man  or  a  moralist,  but  simply  as 
an  artist,  he  shall  reverently  and  humbly  conform  to  the  rules  laid 
down  by  a  Great  Poet  who  created  the  parables  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
and  the  Good  Samaritan,  whose  works  have  lasted  eighteen  hundred 

10  Life  of  Bret  Harte,  286. 


76  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

years,  and  will  remain  when  the  present  writer  and  his  generation  are 
forgotten.  And  he  is  conscious  of  uttering  no  original  doctrine  in  this, 
but  of  only  voicing  the  beliefs  of  a  few  of  his  literary  brethren  happily 
living,  and  one  gloriously  dead,  who  never  made  proclamation  of  this 
from  the  housetops.11 

This  is  insincere  to  the  point  of  bathos.  We  feel  like  saying, 
"Bah!"  Harte  makes  his  villains  heroes  at  the  crisis  simply 
to  add  finesse  to  his  tale.  He  is  dealing  with  paradoxes;  he  is 
working  for  his  reader's  wonder.  If  in  a  moment  where  pity  is 
expected,  woman  is  harsh  and  man  tender;  if  the  reputed  good 
man  is  a  rascal  at  the  supreme  test,  and  the  reputed  rascal  proves 
suddenly  to  be  a  saint,  it  adds  to  the  effectiveness  of  the  tale. 

Everywhere  there  is  the  atmosphere  of  the  theater.  The 
painted  backgrounds  are  marvels  of  skill.  There  are  vast  color 
effects,  and  picturesque  tableaux.  There  is  a  theatric  quality 
about  the  heroines;  we  can  see  the  make-up  upon  their  faces. 
Too  often  they  talk  the  stagiest  of  stage  talk  as  in  the  first  parting 
scene  between  Grace  Conroy  and  Arthur  Poinset.  The  end  is 
always  a  drop-curtain  effect.  Even  Tennessee's  Partner  must 
have  its  appropriate  curtain.  We  can  imagine  a  double  curtain 
for  The  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat:  the  first  tableau  showing  the  two 
dead  women  in  the  snow,  the  second  the  inscription  over  the  body 
of  Oakhurst,  the  gambler.  Instead  of  closing  the  book  with  a 
long  breath  as  after  looking  at  a  quivering  section  of  human  life, 
we  say,  ' '  How  strange !  What  brilliant  work ! ' '  and  we  feel  like 
clapping  our  hands  for  a  tableau  of  all  the  cast,  the  spot  light, 
and  the  quick  curtain. 

Bret  Harte  had  no  real  affection  for  the  West ;  he  never  again 
visited  it ;  he  never  even  wrote  to  the  friends  he  had  left  there. 
With  Mark  Twain  it  was  greatly  different.  The  West  to  him 
was  home;  he  loved  it;  he  recorded  its  deepest  life  with  sym 
pathy.  To  Harte  it  was  simply  a  source  of  literary  material. 
He  skimmed  its  surface  and  found  only  the  melodramatic  anc 
the  sensational. 


And  yet  after  all  the  real  strength  of  Bret  Harte  came  from 
his  contact  with  this  Western  soil.  Irving  and  Dickens  and  the 
early  models  that  had  so  molded  him  served  only  to  teach  him 

11  General  Introduction  to  his  Works. 


BRET  HAUTE  77 

his  trade;  the  breath  of  life  in  his  works  all  came  from  the 
new  life  of  the  West.  It  would  be  impossible  for  one  to  live 
during  seventeen  years  of  his  early  life  in  an  atmosphere  like 
that  of  the  west  coast  and  not  be  transformed  by  it.  Taking 
his  work  altogether  there  is  in  it  far  more  of  California  than 
there  is  of  Dickens  or  of  all  the  others  of  the  older  writers. 
Only  a  few  things  of  the  life  of  the  West  seem  to  have  impressed 
him.  He  lived  fifteen  years  in  San  Francisco  yet  we  see  almost 
nothing  of  that  city  in  his  work;  the  dramatic  career  of  the 
Vigilantes  he  touched  upon  almost  not  at  all.  He  selected  the 
remote  mining  camps  for  his  field  and  yet  he  seems  to  have  been 
impressed  by  very  few  of  the  types  that  were  found  in  them. 
Only  a  few  of  them  ring  true  at  every  point,  Yuba  Bill  the 
stage  driver  is  one.  We  feel  that  he  was  drawn  by  a  master  who 
has  actually  lived  with  his  model.  Yuba  Bill  is  the  typical  man 
of  the  region  and  the  period — masterful,  self-reliant,  full  of  a 
humor  that  is  elemental.  There  is  no  prolonged  study  of  him. 
We  see  him  for  a  tense  moment  as  the  stage  swings  up  to  the 
station,  and  then  he  is  gone.  He  is  as  devoid  of  sentimentality 
as  even  Horace  Bixby.  The  company  have  been  shouting 
*  'Higgles!"  at  the  dark  cabin  but  have  got  no  reply  save  from 
what  proves  later  to  have  been  a  parrot : 

"Extraordinary  echo,"  said  the  Judge. 

"Extraordinary  d — d  skunk!"  roared  the  driver  contemptuously. 
"Come  out  of  that,  Higgles,  and  show  yourself.  Be  a  man." 

Higgles,  however,  did  not  appear. 

Yuba  Bill  hesitated  no  longer.  Taking  a  heavy  stone  from  the  road, 
he  battered  down  the  gate,  and  with  the  expressman  entered  the  en 
closure.  .  .  . 

"Do  you  know  this  Higgles?"  asked  the  Judge  of  Yuba  Bill. 

"No,  nor  don't  want  to,"  said  Bill  shortly. 

"But,  my  dear  sir,"  expostulated  the  Judge,  as  he  thought  of  the 
barred  gate. 

"Lookee  here,"  said  Yuba  Bill,  with  fine  irony,  "had  n't  you  better 
go  back  and  sit  in  the  coach  till  yer  introduced  ?  I  'm  going  in,"  and 
he  pushed  open  the  door  of  the  building. 

That  rings  true.  If  one  were  obliged  to  ride  at  night  over  a 
wild,  road-agent-infested  trail  there  is  no  character  in  all  fiction 
whom  we  would  more  gladly  have  for  driver  than  Yuba  Bill. 
We  would  like  to  see  more  of  him  than  the  brief  glimpses  al 
lowed  us  by  his  creator. 


78  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 


. 


The  humor  in  Ilarte  is  largely  Western  humor.  There  is  the 
rue  California  ring  in  such  conversations,  for  instance,  as  those 
in  the  earlier  pages  of  Uncle  Jim  and  Uncle  Billy.  It  is  an 
atmosphere  rather  than  a  series  of  hits.  One  finds  it  in  The 
Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat: 

A  few  of  the  committee  had  urged  hanging  him  [Oakhurst]  as  a  pos 
sible  example,  and  a  sure  method  of  reimbursing  themselves  from  his 
pockets  of  the  sums  he  had  won  from  them.  "It's  agin  justice,"  said 
.Jim  Wheeler,  "to  let  this  yer  young  man  from  Roaring  Camp — an  en 
tire  stranger — carry  away  our  money."  But  a  crude  sentiment  of 
equity  residing  in  the  breasts  of  those  who  had  been  fortunate  enough 
to  win  from  Mr.  Oakhurst  overruled  this  narrower  local  prejudice. 

This  atmosphere  of  humor  shimmers  through  all  of  the  stories. 
There  is  never  uproarious  merriment,  but  there  is  constant  humor. 
The  conjugal  troubles  of  the  "old  man"  in  How  Santa  Glaus 
Came  to  Simpson's  Bar  are  thus  touched  upon: 

His  first  wife,  a  delicate,  pretty  little  woman,  had  suffered  keenly  and 
secretly  from  the  jealous  suspicions  of  her  husband,  until  one  day  he 
invited  the  whole  Bar  to  his  house  to  expose  her  infidelity.  On  arriv 
ing,  the  party  found  the  shy,  petite  creature  quietly  engaged  in  her 
household  duties  and  retired  abashed  and  discomfited.  But  the  sensi 
tive  woman  did  not  easily  recover  from  her  shock  of  this  extraordinary 
outniire.  It  was  with  difficulty  she  regained  her  equanimity  sufficiently 
to  release  her  lover  from  the  closet  in  which  he  was  concealed  and 
escape  with  him.  She  left  a  boy  of  three  years  to  comfort  her  be 
reaved  husband.  The  old  man's  present  wife  had  been  his  cook.  She 
was  large,  loyal,  and  aggressive. 

His  characters  are  exceptions  and  his  situations  are  theatric, 
yet  for  all  that  he  cannot  be  ignored.  He  caught  the  spirit  of 
the  early  raining  camps  and  with  it  the  romantic  atmosphere  of 
the  old  Spanish  Colonial  civilization  that  was  swept  away  by  the 
Anglo-Saxon  rush  for  gold.  His  name  cannot  fail  to  go  down 
with  the  era  he  recorded,  and  to  identify  oneself  forever  with  an 
era,  even  though  that  era  be  a  brief  and  restricted  one,  is  no 
small  achievement.  He  is  the  writer  of  the  epic  of  the  gold  rush 
of  the  middle  century  in  America,  and  whatever  the  quality  of 
that  epic  may  be,  it  can  never  be  forgotten.  He  said  in  1868 : 

It  niny  not  have  been  an  heroic  era;  it  may  have  been  a  hard,  ugly, 
mi  worked,  vulgar  and  lawless  era;  but  of  such  are  heroes  and  aris- 
tocracie<  born.  Three  hundred  years,  and  what  a  glamor  shall  hang 
about  it !  ...  A  thousand  years,  and  a  new  Virgil  sings  the  American 


BRET  HARTE  79 

^Eneid  with  the  episode  of  Jason  and  the  California  golden  fleece,  and 
the  historians  tell  us  it  is  a  myth!  Laugh,  my  pioneer  friends,  but 
your  great-great-great-great-grandchildren  shall  weep  reverential  tears. 
History,  as  was  said  of  martyrdom,  is  "mean  in  the  making"  but  how 
heroic  it  becomes  in  the  perspective  of  five  centuries ! 12 

And  in  many  ways  his  work  is  really  of  epic  strength.  He  dealt 
with  elemental  men,  often  with  veritable  demigods,  as  Yuba 
Bill.  His  canvases  are  as  broad  as  those  even  of  Mark  Twain. 
His  human  drama  is  played  before  a  truly  "Western  background. 
While  Tennessee  is  being  tried  for  his  life,  "Above  all  this, 
etched  on  the  dark  firmament,  rose  the  Sierra,  remote  and  pas 
sionless,  crowned  with  remoter  passionless  stars."  At  moments 
of  crisis  the  narrative  always  moves  with  power.  The  wolves 
and  the  fire  in  the  story  In  the  Carquinez  Woods  are  intensely 
vivid  and  lurid  in  their  presentation.  The  ride  from  Simpson's 
Bar  is  told  with  the  graphic  thrill  of  an  eye-witness,  and  the 
description  of  the  snow-storm  at  the  opening  of  Gabriel  Conroy 
reminds  one  of  Thomas  Hardy. 

VI 

Finally,  Harte  was  the  parent  of  the  modern  form  of  the  short 
story.  It  was  he  who  started  Kipling  and  Cable  and  Thomas 
Nelson  Page.  Few  indeed  have  surpassed  him  in  the  mechanics 
of  this  most  difficult  of  arts.  According  to  his  own  belief,  the 
form  is  an  American  product.  We  can  do  no  better  than  to 
quote  from  his  essay  on  The  Rise  of  the  Short  Story.  It  traces 
the  evolution  of  a  peculiarly  American  addition  to  literature. 

But  while  the  American  literary  imagination  was  still  under  the 
influence  of  English  tradition,  an  unexpected  factor  was  developing  to 
diminish  its  power.  It  was  humor,  of  a  quality  as  distinct  and  original 
as  the  country  and  civilization  in  which  it  was  developed.  It  was  first 
noticeable  in  the  anecdote  or  "story,"  and,  after  the  fashion  of  such 
beginnings,  was  orally  transmitted.  It  was  common  in  the  bar-rooms, 
the  gatherings  in  the  "country  store,"  and  finally  at  public  meetings  in 
the  mouths  of  "stump  orators."  Arguments  were  clinched  and  political 
principles  illustrated  by  "a  funny  story."  It  invaded  even  the  camp 
meeting  and  pulpit.  It  at  last  received  the  currency  of  the  public 
press.  But  wherever  met  it  was  so  distinctly  original  and  novel,  so 
individual  and  characteristic,  that  it  was  at  once  known  and  appreciated, 
abroad  as  "an  American  story."  Crude  at  first,  it  received  a  literary 

12  Overland  Monthly,  1:191. 


80  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

polish  in  the  press,  but  its  dominant  quality  remained.  It  was  concise 
and  condense,  yet  suggestive.  It  was  delightfully  rxtrava-jant,  or  a 
miracle  of  under-statement.  It  voiced  not  only  the  dialect,  but  the 
habits  of  thought  of  a  people  or  locality.  It  gave  a  new  interest  to 
slang.  From  a  paragraph  of  a  dozen  lines  it  grew  into  half  a  column, 
l)ii t  always  retaining  its  conciseness  and  felicity  of  statement.  It  was 
a  foe  to  prolixity  of  any  kind;  it  admitted  no  fine  writing  nor  affecta 
tion  of  style.  It  went  directly  to  the  point.  It  was  burdened  by  no 
conscientiousness;  it  was  often  irreverent;  it  was  devoid  of  all  moral 
responsibility,  but  it  was  original!  By  degrees  it  developed  character 
with  its  incident,  often,  in  a  few  lines,  gave  a  striking  photograph  of 
a  community  or  a  section,  but  always  reached  its  conclusion  without  an 
unnecessary  word.  It  became — and  still  exists  as — an  essential  feature 
of  newspaper  literature.  It  was  the  parent  of  the  American  "short 
story."13 

Harte  has  described  the  genesis  of  his  own  art.  It  sprang 
from  the  Western  humor  and  was  developed  by  the  circumstances 
that  surrounded  him.  Many  of  his  short  stories  are  models. 
They  contain  not  a  superfluous  word;  they  handle  a  single  in 
cident  with  graphic  power ;  they  close  without  moral  or  comment. 
The  form  came  as  a  natural  evolution  from  his  limitations  and 
powers.  With  him  the  story  must  of  necessity  be  brief.  He  who 
depicts  the  one  good  deed  in  a  wicked  life  must  of  necessity  use 
a  small  canvas.  At  one  moment  in  his  career  Jack  Hamlin  or 
Mother  Shipton  or  Sandy  does  a  truly  heroic  deed,  but  the 
author  must  not  extend  his  inquiries  too  far.  To  make  a  novel 
with  Mother  Shipton  as  heroine  would  be  intolerable. 

Harte  was  unable  to  hold  himself  long  to  any  one  effort.  Like 
Byron,  he  must  bring  down  his  quarry  at  a  single  spring ;  he  had 
no  patience  to  pursue  it  at  length.  Gabriel  Conroy  is  at  the 
same  time  the  best  and  the  worst  American  novel  of  the  century. 
It  is  the  best  in  its  wealth  of  truly  American  material  and  in  the 
brilliant  passages  that  strew  its  pages;  it  is  the  worse  in  that  it 
utterly  fails  in  its  construction,  and  that  it  builds  up  its  char 
acters  wholly  from  the  outside.  Its  hero,  moreover,  changes  his 
personality  completely  three  times  during  the  story,  and  its 
heroine  is  first  an  uneducated  Pike  maiden  of  the  Southwest, 
then  a  Spanish  senorita: 

Features  small,  and  perfectly  modeled;  the  outline  of  the  small  face 
was  a  perfect  oval,  but  the  complection  was  of  burnished  copper.  .  .  . 
The  imperious  habit  of  command ;  an  almost  despotic  control  of  a  hun- 

"  Pemberton's  Life  of  Bret  Harte,  298. 


BRET  HARTE  81 

dred  servants;  a  certain  barbaric  contempt  for  the  unlimited  revenues 
at  her  disposal  that  prompted  the  act,  became  her  wonderfully.  In  her 
impatience  the  quick  blood  glanced  through  her  bronzed  cheek,  her  little 
slipper  tapped  the  floor  imperiously  and  her  eyes  flashed  in  the  dark 
ness. 

Later  we  learn  that  she  had  been  adopted  into  this  Spanish 
family  after  her  lover  had  abandoned  her  in  the  earlier  chapters, 
and  had  been  given  her  complexion  by  means  of  a  vegetable 
stain.  But  there  is  still  another  lightning  change.  At  the  end 
of  the  book  she  becomes  a  Pike  again  and  weakly  marries  the 
unrepentant  rascal  who  earlier  had  betrayed  her.  In  the  words 
of  Artemus  Ward,  "it  is  too  much."  It  is  not  even  good  melo 
drama,  for  in  melodrama  the  villain  is  punished  at  the  end. 

Bret  Harte  was  the  artist  of  impulse,  the  painter  of  single 
burning  moments,  the  flashlight  photographer  who  caught  in 
lurid  detail  one  dramatic  episode  in  the  life  of  a  man  or  a  com 
munity  and  left  the  rest  in  darkness. 

VII 

In  his  later  years  Harte 's  backgrounds  became  less  sharp  in 
outline.  His  methods  grew  more  romantic ;  his  atmospheres 
more  mellow  and  golden.  The  old  Spanish  dream  of  the  days 
of  his  early  art  possessed  him  again,  and  he  added  to  his  gallery 
of  real  creations — M'liss,  Yuba  Bill,  Jack  Hamlin,  Tennessee's 
Partner — one  that  perhaps  is  the  strongest  of  them  all,  Enriquez 
Saltillo,  the  last  of  a  fading  race.  Nothing  Harte  ever  did  will 
surpass  that  creation  of  his  old  age.  In  Chu  Chu,  The  Devotion 
of  Enriquez,  and  The  Passing  of  Enriquez  we  have  the  fitting 
close  of  the  work  of  the  romancer  of  the  west  coast.  For  once 
at  least  he  saw  into  the  heart  of  a  man.  Listen  to  Enriquez  as 
he  makes  his  defense : 

Then  they  say,  "Dry  up,  and  sell  out";  and  the  great  bankers  say, 
"Name  your  own  price  for  your  stock,  and  resign."  And  I  say,  "There 
is  not  gold  enough  in  your  bank,  in  your  San  Francisco,  in  the  mines 
of  California,  that  shall  buy  a  Spanish  gentleman.  When  I  leave,  I 
leave  the  stock  at  my  back ;  I  shall  take  it,  nevarre !"  Then  the  banker 
he  say,  "And  you  will  go  and  blab,  I  suppose?"  And  then,  Pancho,  I 
smile,  I  pick  up  my  mustache — so!  and  I  say:  "Pardon,  sefior,  you 
haf  mistake.  The  Saltillo  haf  for  three  hundred  year  no  stain,  no 
blot  upon  him.  Eet  is  not  now — the  last  of  the  race — who  shall  con 
fess  that  he  haf  sit  at  a  board  of  disgrace  and  dishonor !"  And  then  it 


82  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

is  that  the  band  begin  to  play,  and  the  animals  stand  on  their  hind  legs 
and  waltz,  and  behold,  the  row  he  haf  begin. 

It  is  the  atmosphere  of  romance,  for  the  mine  which  had  caused 
all  the  trouble  had  been  in  the  family  three  hundred  years  and 
it  had  become  a  part  of  the  family  itself.  When  it  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  new  regime,  when  his  wife,  who  also 
was  of  the  new  regime,  deserted  him,  then  passed  Enriquez. 
The  earth  that  for  three  hundred  years  had  borne  his  fathers 
opened  at  the  earthquake  and  took  him  to  herself.  It  was  the 
conception  of  a  true  romancer.  The  work  of  Bret  Harte  opened 
and  closed  with  a  vision  of  romance,  a  vision  worthy  even  of  a 
Hawthorne. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

BRET  HABTB.  (1839-1902.)  The  Lost  Galleon  and  Other  Tales  [Poems], 
1867;  Condensed  Novels  and  Other  Papers,  1867;  The  Luck  of  Roaring 
Camp  and  Other  Sketches,  1870;  Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James, 
1870;  The  Pliocene  SKull,  1871;  Poems,  1871;  East  and  West  Poems,  1871; 
The  Heathen  Chinee  and  Other  Poems,  1871;  Poetical  Works,  1872;  Mrs. 
Skagg's  Husbands,  1873;  M'liss:  An  Idyl  of  Red  Mountain,  1873;  Echoes 
of  the  Foot-Hills  [Poems],  1875;  Tales  of  the  Argonauts,  1875;  Gabriel 
Conroy,  187C;  Two  Men  of  Sandy  Bar,  1876;  Thankful  Blossom,  1877;  The 
Story  of  a  Mine,  1878;  Drift  from  Two  Shores,  1878;  The  Twins  of  Table 
Mountain,  1879;  Works  in  five  volumes,  1882;  Flip,  and  Found  at  Blazing 
Star,  1882;  In  the  Carquinez  Woods,  1884;  On  the  Frontier,  1884;  Maruja, 
1885;  By  Shore  and  Sedge,  1885;  Snow  Bound  at  Eagle's,  1885;  A  Million 
aire  of  Kough-and-Ready,  1887;  The  Crusade  of  the  Excelsior,  1887;  The 
Argonauts  of  \orth  Liberty,  1888;  A  Phyllis  of  the  Sierra*,  1888;  Cressy, 
1889;  The  Heritage  of  Dedlow  Marsh,  1889;  A  Waif  of  the  Plains,  1890; 
A  Ward  of  the  Golden  Gate,  1890;  A  Sappho  of  Green  Springs,  1891; 
Colonel  Starbottle's  Client,  1892;  A  First  Family  of  Tasajara,  1892;  Susy: 
a  Story  of  the  Plains,  1893;  Sally  Dows  and  Other  Stories,  1893;  A  Pro- 
ttge  of  Jack  Hamlin's,  1894;  The  Bell-Ringer  of  Angel's,  1894;  In  a  Hol 
low  of  the  Hills,  1895;  Clarence,  1895;  Barker's  Luck,  1896;  Three  Part 
ners,  1897;  Talcs  of  Trail  and  Town,  1898;  Stories  in  Light  and  Shadow, 
1898;  Mr.  Jack  Hamlin's  Meditation,  1899;  From  Sandhill  to  Pine,  1900; 
Under  the  Redwoods,  1901;  Openings  in  the  Old  Trail,  1902;  Life  of  Bret 
li'irtr,  by  T.  Edgar  Pemberton,  1903;  Bret  Harte,  by  Henry  W.  Boynton, 
1905;  The  Life  of  Bret  Harte  with  Some  Account  of  the  California  Pion 
eers,  by  Henry  Childs  Merwin,  1911. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   DISCOVERY   OF   PIKE   COUNTY 

The  new  era  of  vulgarity  in  literature,  complained  of  by  Sted- 
man,  came  as  a  revolt  against  mid-century  tendencies.  The 
movement  was  not  confined  to  America.  In  the  early  seventies, 
as  we  have  seen,  Millet  and  his  Breton  peasants  for  a  time  took 
possession  of  French  art ;  Hardy  with  his  Wessex  natives  caught 
the  ear  of  England;  Bjb'rnson  made  the  discovery  that  in  the 
Scandinavian  peasant  lay  the  only  survival  of  the  old  Norse 
spirit;  and  the  Russians  Tourgenieff  and  Tolstoy  cast  aside  the 
old  mythology  and  told  with  minuteness  the  life  of  the  peasant 
and  the  serf.  Everywhere  there  was  a  swing  toward  the  wild 
and  unconventional,  even  toward  the  coarse  and  repulsive.  The 
effeminacy  of  early  Tennysonianism,  the  cloying  sweetness  of 
the  mid-century  annual,  Keatsism,  Hyperionism,  Heineism,  had 
culminated  in  reaction.  There  was  a  craving  for  the  acrid  tang 
of  uncultivated  things  in  borderlands  and  fields  unsown. 

In  America  had  sprung  up  a  group  of  humorists  who  had  filled 
the  newspapers  and  magazines  of  the  era  with  that  masculine 
laughter  which  was  echoing  along  the  Mississippi  and  the  Ohio 
and  the  gold  camps  of  the  Sierras.  They  were  pioneers;  they 
were  looking  for  incongruities  and  exaggerations,  and  quite  by 
accident  they  discovered  a  new  American  type,  the  Pike, — 
strange  creature  to  inspire  a  new  literature. 


America  has  evolved  four  types,  perhaps  five,  that  are  unique^ 
"new  birth  of  our  new  soil":  the  Yankee  of  the  Hosea  Biglow 
and  Sam  Lawson  variety ;  the  frontiersman  and  scout  exemplified 
in  Leather  Stocking;  the  Southern  "darky"  as  depicted  by  Rus 
sell,  Harris,  Page,  and  others;  the  circuit  rider  of  the  frontier 
period ;  and  the  Pike. 

83 


84  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

•  A  Pike,"  says  Bayard  Taylor,  "in  the  California  dialect,  is  a  native 
of  Missouri.  Arkansas,  Northern  Texas,  or  Southern  Illinois.  The  first 
i-migrants  that  came  over  the  plains  were  from  Pike  County,  Missouri; 
but  as  the  phrase,  'a  Pike  County  man,'  was  altogether  too  long  for 
this  short  life  of  ours,  it  was  soon  abbreviated  into  'a  Pike/  Besides, 
the  emigrants  from  the  aforementioned  localities  belonged  evidently  to 
the  same  genus,  and  the  epithet  'Western*  was  by  no  means  sufficiently 
descriptive.  .  .  .  He  is  the  Anglo-Saxon  relapsed  into  semi-barbarism. 
He  is  long,  lathy,  and  sallow;  he  expectorates  vehemently;  he  takes 
naturally  to  whisky ;  he  has  the  'shakes'  his  life  long  at  home,  though 
he  generally  manages  to  get  rid  of  them  in  California;  he  has  little 
respect  for  the  rights  of  others;  he  distrusts  men  in  'store  clothes/  but 
venerates  the  memory  of  Andrew  Jackson."  l 

Although  he  had  not  yet  been  named,  the  Pike  had  already 
figured  in  American  literature.  George  \V.  Harris  had  pub 
lished  in  1867  Sut  Lovengood's  Yarns,  a  true  piece  of  Pike  litera 
ture;  Longstreet  had  drawn  the  type  with  fidelity  in  Georgia 
Scenes,  Baldwin's  Flush  Times,  and  the  sketches  of  such  ephem 
eral  writers  as  Madison  Tensas,  Sol  Smith,  T.  W.  Lane,  T.  A. 
Burke,  and  J.  L.  McCozmel,  the  author  of  Western  Characters, 
had  drawn  the  first  broad  outlines.  In  all  this  work  he  was 
simply  the  crude,  uncouth  Westerner,  the  antithesis  of  the  man 
of  the  East. 

The  first  to  discover  him  in  his  California  phase  and  to  affix 
to  him  for  the  first  time  in  any  book  of  moment  the  name  Pike 
was  "John  Phoenix"  who  in  Ph&nixiana  drew,  as  we  have  seen, 
a  sketch  which  has  scarcely  been  improved  upon  by  later  writers. 
It  was  not  until  1871,  however,  that  the  name  Pike  and  the 
peculiar  type  denoted  by  the  name  became  at  all  known  to  the 
reading  public. 

The  instant  and  enormous  vogue  of  Pike  literature  came  almost 
by  accident.  Bret  Harte  late  in  the  sixties  had  dashed  oft0  in  a 
happy  moment  a  humorous  account  of  an  attempt  made  by  two 
California  gamblers  to  fleece  an  innocent  Chinaman  who  turned 
out  to  be  anything  but  innocent.  He  had  entitled  the  poem 
4 'Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James"  and  had  thrown  it 
aside  as  a  trifle.  Some  months  later  during  the  last  exciting 
moments  before  going  to  press  with  an  edition  of  the  Overland 
Monthly  it  was  discovered  that  the  form  was  one  page  short. 
There  was  nothing  ready  but  this  poem,  and  with  misgivings 

i  At  Home  and  Abroad,  Second  Series,  51. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE  COUNTY  85 

Harte  inserted  it.  The  result  was  nothing  less  than  amazing. 
It  proved  to  be  the  most  notable  page  in  the  history  of  the  maga 
zine.  The  poem  captured  the  East  completely ;  it  was  copied  and 
quoted  and  laughed  at  in  every  corner  of  the  country.  It  swept 
through  England  and  beyond.  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  and 
the  two  or  three  strong  pieces  that  followed  it  had  given  Harte 
a  certain  vogue  in  the  East,  but  now  he  swiftly  became  not  only 
a  national,  but  an  international  figure.  The  fame  of  the 
''Heathen  Chinee,"  as  the  poem  was  now  called,  brought  out  of 
obscurity  other  poems  written  by  Harte  during  his  editorial 
days,  among  them  "The  Society  upon  the  Stanislaus,"  and  it 
gave  wings  to  other  verses  that  he  now  wrote  in  the  "Heathen 
Chinee"  meter  and  stanza— " Dow 's  Flat"  and  "Penelope." 
Quickly  there  were  added  ' '  Jim, "  "  Chiquita, "  "  In  the  Tunnel, ' ' 
and  "Cicely,"  all  of  them  dealing  not  with  the  "heathen  Chinee" 
of  his  first  great  strike,  but  with  that  other  picturesque  figure  of 
early  California,  the  Pike. 

It  was  goldf — in  the  quartz, 

And  it  ran  all  alike; 
And  I  reckon  five  oughts 

Was  the  worth  of  that  strike; 

And  that  house  with  the  coopilow's  his'n, — which  the  same 
is  n't  bad  for  a  Pike. 

These  poems  with  others  were  published  in  1871  with  the  title 
East  and  West  Poems.  The  Pike  County  pieces  in  the  volume 
number  altogether  seven;  John  Hay's  Pike  County  Ballads. 
which  came  out  in  book  form  at  almost  the  same  moment,  num 
bered  six — thirteen  rather  remarkable  poems  when  one  considers 
the  furore  that  they  created  and  the  vast  influence  they  exerted 
upon  their  times. 

For  a  decade  and  more  Pike  County  colored  American  litera 
ture.  In  1871  J.  G.  Holland  summed  up  the  situation : 

The  "Pike"  .  .  .  has  produced  a  strange  and  startling  sensation  in 
recent  literature.  .  .  .  With  great  celerity  he  has  darted  through  the 
columns  of  our  newspapers,  the  pages  of  our  magazines,  while  quiet, 
well-behaved  contributors  have  stood  one  side  and  let  him  have  his  own 
wild  way.  And  it  began  to  seem,  at  one  time,  as  if  the  ordinary,  decent 
virtues  of  civilized  society  could  stand  no  chance  in  comparison  with 
the  picturesque  heroism  of  this  savage  in  dialect.2 

2  Berliner's  Monthly,  2:430. 


86  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Much  of  Harte 's  fiction  deals  with  this  type.  Save  for  Yuba 
Bill,  who  was  evidently  a  Northerner,  the  New  Orleans  gamblers 
like  Oakhurst  and  Jack  Hamlin,  and  the  Spanish  and  Mexican 
natives,  his  characters  were  prevailingly  Pikes.  The  dialect  in  all 
of  his  work  is  dominated  by  this  Southwestern  element.  In  The 
New  Assistant  at  the  Pine  Clearing  School,  for  instance,  the 
leader  of  the  strike  discourses  like  this:  "We  ain't  hanker! n' 
much  for  grammar  and  dictionary  hogwash,  and  we  don't  want 
no  Boston  parts  o'  speech  rung  in  on  us  the  first  thing  in  the 
mo'nin'.  We  ain't  Boston — We  're  Pike  County — we  are." 
Tennessee's  Partner  was  a  Pike,  and  Uncle  Jim  and  Uncle 
Hilly,  and  Kentuck  and  Sandy — glorified  to  be  sure  and  trans 
formed  by  California  and  the  society  of  the  mines,  but  none  the 
less  Pikes. 

\  Following  Harte  and  Hay  came  the  outburst  of  local  color 
(fiction.  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  Cape  Cod  Folks,  Sam  Law- 
son's  Fireside  Stories,  Hoosier  Mosaics,  Deephaven,  Old  Creole 
Days,  In  tlie  Tennessee  Mountains  were  but  the  beginning.  For 

I  two  decades  and  more  American  fiction  ran  to  the  study  of  local 
types  and  peculiar  dialect.  The  movement  was  not  confined  to 
prose.  The  Pike  County  balladry  was  continued  by  Sidney 
Lanier  and  Irwin  Russell  with  their  songs  and  ballads  of  the 
ii'-jjro  quarters,  Will  Carleton  with  his  farm  ballads,  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley  with  his  Hoosier  studies,  Drummond  with  his  tales  of 
tho  "Habitant"  of  the  Canadian  frontier,  and  by  Eugene  Field, 
Sam  Walter  Foss,  Holman  F.  Day,  and  scores  of  others  down  to 
Robert  W.  Service,  the  depicter  of  the  Yukon  and  the  types  of 
the  later  gold  rush. 

II 

Whether  the  Pike  County  balladry  began  with  Bret  Harte  or 
with  John  Hay,  Is  a  question  at  present  unsettled.  Mark  Twain 
was  positive  that  Hay  was  the  pioneer.  His  statement  is  im 
portant  : 

"It  was  contemporaneously  supposed,"  he  wrote  after  Hay's  death, 
"that  the  Pike  County  Ballads  were  inspired  or  provoked  by  the  Pike 
County  balladry  of  Bret  Harte,  and  they  were  first  accepted  as  imita 
tions  or  parodies.  They  were  not  written  later,  they  were  written 
(and  printed  in  newspapers)  earlier.  Mr.  Hay  told  me  this  himself — 
in  1870  or  '71,  I  should  say.  I  believe — indeed,  I  am  quite  sure — that 
he  added  that  the  newspapers  referred  to  were  obscure  western  back- 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE  COUNTY  87 

woods  journals  and  that  the  ballads  were  not  widely  copied.  Also  he 
said  this:  That  by  and  by,  when  Harte's  ballads  began  to  sweep  the 
country,  the  noise  woke  his  (Hay's)  buried  waifs  and  they  rose  and 
walked."  3 

To  this  testimony  may  be  added  Howells's  belief  that  Hay's 
ballads  were  prior  to  Harte  's  and  that  '  *  a  comparative  study  will 
reveal  their  priority,"4  and  the  statement  of  W.  E.  Norris,  a 
schoolmate  of  the  poet,  that  "the  ballads  appeared  as  fugitive 
pieces  in  the  newspapers,  as  I  remember,  and  the  attention  they 
attracted  induced  the  author  to  compile  them  with  others  in 
book  form."5 

A  comparative  study  of  the  poems  certainly  reveals  the  fact 
that  one  set  was  influenced  by  the  other.  "Cicely"  and  "Little 
Breeches"  have  very  much  in  common.  They  are  in  the  same 
meter,  and  in  one  place  they  have  practically  identical  lines : 

But  I  takes  mine  straight  without  sugar,  and  that's  what's  the  mat 
ter  of  me. — Cicely. 

I  want  a  chaw  of  terbacker, 

And  that's  what's  the  matter  with  me. 

— Little  Breeches. 

There  are  similarities  in  others  of  the  poems : 

Don't  know  Flynn, — 

Flynn  of  Virginia, — 

Long  as  he 's  been  'yar  ? 

Look  'ee  here,  stranger, 

Whar  hev  you  been?  — In  the  Tunnel. 

Whar  have  you  been  for  the  last  three  year. 

That  you  have  n't  heard  folks  tell 
How  Jimmy  Bludso  passed  in  his  checks 

The  night  of  the  Prairie  Belle?  —Jim  Bludso. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  a  study  of  the  ballads  and  of  the 
other  poetical  works  of  the  two  poets  leaves  one  with  the  impres 
sion  that  Harte  was  first  in  the  field.  Hay's  six  Pike  County 
ballads  stand  isolated  among  his  poems.  Everything  he  wrote 
before  them  and  after  them  is  in  an  utterly  different  key.  One 
feels  as  he  reads  him  straight  through — the  earlier  lyrics,  Cas- 

3  Harper's  Weekly,  49:530. 

*  North  American  Review,   181:343. 

6  Century  Magazine,  78 : 444. 


88  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

tilian  Days,  the  later  lyrics,  The  Breadrwinncrs,  The  Life  of 
I.  coin — that  these  poems  came  from  an  impulse,  that  they 
must  have  been  thrown  off  in  quick  succession  all  at  one  time  in 
answer  to  some  sudden  impression.  One  feels,  therefore,  more 
like  trusting  a  contemporary  biographical  sketch  than  the  un 
supported  impressions  of  contemporaries  thirty  years  after  the 
event.  A  sketch  of  John  Hay,  written  by  Clarence  King  in 
April,  1874,  records  that  when  Hay  returned  from  Spain  in 
1870 

All  the  world  was  reading  Mr.  Bret  Harte's  "Heathen  Chinee"  and 
Mr.  Hay  did  what  all  the  world  was  doing.  .  .  .  He  read  all  the  poems, 
but  "Chiquita"  and  "Cicely,"  which  gave  him  particular  pleasure,  puz 
zled  him  and  set  him  to  thinking.  .  .  .  He  saw  how  infinitely  nobler 
and  better  than  nature  they  were,  but,  having  been  born  and  brought 
up  as  a  Pike  himself,  he  saw  that  they  were  not  nature.  He  wrote 
"Little  Breeches"  for  his  own  amusement — at  least  we  have  heard  this 
is  his  account  of  the  matter — to  see  how  a  genuine  Western  feeling  ex 
pressed  in  genuine  Western  language,  would  impress  Western  people. 
.  .  .  The  ballads  were  written  within  a  few  days  of  each  other:  two 
of  them  in  a  single  evening.6 

This  seems  all  the  more  reasonable  after  we  have  considered 
Hay's  earlier  poetic  ideals.  He  had  been  born  into  a  refined 
home  in  the  middle  West,  the  son  of  a  doctor  and  a  New  England 
mother,  and  he  had  grown  up  amid  books  and  intellectual  ideals. 
At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  had  been  sent  to  his  uncle  in  Pike 
County,  Illinois,  to  attend  a  private  school  which  proved  to  be 
of  such  excellent  quality  that  three  years  later  he  was  prepared 
to  enter  the  Sophomore  class  at  Brown.  His  life  at  Providence 
awakened  within  him  new  ideals.  He  was  invited  into  the  lit 
erary  circle  of  the  little  city  where  he  came  to  know  Mrs.  Whit 
man,  whose  life  at  one  time  had  touched  that  of  Poe,  and  more 
significant  still,  Nora  Perry,  the  poet,  a  kindred  soul.  Grad 
uating  at  nineteen,  the  poet  of  his  class,  he  went  back  to  Warsaw, 
the  little  Mississippi  River  town  of  his  boyhood,  dreaming  the 
dreams  of  a  poet.  But  the  outlook  for  the  young  dreamer  was  a 
depressing  one.  * '  I  am  removed  to  a  colder  mental  atmosphere, ' ' 
he  wrote  to  Miss  Perry.  In  the  West,  "I  find  only  a  dreary 
waste  of  heartless  materialism,  where  great  and  heroic  qualities 
may  indeed  bully  their  way  up  into  the  glare,  but  the  flowers  of 

«  Scribner's  Monthly,  7:736. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE  COUNTY  89 

existence  inevitably  droop  and  wither. ' ' 7  He  wrote  much  poetry 
during  this  early  period — translations  of  Heine,  Longfellow- 
like  poems  of  beauty,  and  stirring  lyrics  to  Miss  Perry,  who  kept 
alive  his  poetic  dreams  with  letters  and  poems,  among  them  her 
"After  the  Ball"  which  she  had  shown  him  before  it  appeared 
in  the  Atlantic.  No  Pike  County  notes  in  this  period:  he  was 
filled  with  the  vision  that  even  then  was  inspiring  the  little 
transition  school  of  poets  struggling  along  the  old  paths :  Sted- 
man,  Stoddard,  Aldrich,  Hayne,  Sill,  and  the  others. 

But  there  was  no  place  in  the  young  West  for  such  dreams. 
He  burned  much  of  the  poetry  he  had  written  and  set  out  sternly 
to  study  law  in  his  uncle 's  office.  ' '  I  feel  that  Illinois  and  Rhode 
Island  are  entirely  antipathetic/'  he  confessed  to  Miss  Perry. 
Within  him  he  felt  the  fires  even  of  genius,  he  wrote,  ' '  but  when 
you  reflect  how  unsuitable  such  sentiments  are  to  the  busy  life 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  you  may  imagine  then  what  an  over 
hauling  I  must  receive — at  my  own  hands  too.  There  is,  as  yet, 
no  room  in  the  West  for  a  genius. ' ' 8 

No  more  poetry.  He  turned  from  it  out  of  sheer  sense  of 
duty  and  began  with  the  law.  But  he  was  to  be  no  lawyer.  In 
his  uncle's  office  in  Springfield  he  came  into  intimate  contact 
with  Lincoln,  and  before  his  law  studies  had  matured  at  all,  he 
found  himself  in  Washington,  the  assistant  secretary  of  the  new 
President.  Poetry  now  was  out  of  the  question.  The  war  took 
his  every  moment,  and  after  the  war  there  was  diplomatic 
service  abroad,  at  Paris,  at  Vienna,  at  Madrid.  The  literary 
product  of  this  latter  period  is  as  far  from  Pike  work  as 
Rhode  Island  was  from  Illinois.  One  may  find  it  in  the  section 
of  his  poems  headed  "Wanderlieder" — beautiful  lyrics  of  the 
Longfellow  type — ' '  Sunrise  in  the  Place  de  la  Concorde, "  '  *  The 
Monks  of  Basle,"  "Ernst  of  Edelsheim,"  and  the  like.  He 
brought  with  him  too  when  he  returned  in  1870  his  Spanish 
Sketch  Book,  Castilian  Days,  the  work  of  a  poet,  golden  atmos- 
phered,  vivid,  delightful.  In  the  five  years  that  followed  on  the 
Tribune  staff  he  wrote  for  the  magazines  his  best  poems.  He  was 
a  lyrist  with  a  pen  of  gold,  impassioned  at  times  and  impetu 
ous: 

7  A  Poet  in  Exile.     Early  Letters  of  John  Hay.     Caroline  Ticknor,  18. 
24. 


90  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Roll  on,  0  shining  sun, 

To  the  far  seas, 
Bring  down,  ye  shades  of  eve, 

The  soft,  salt  breeze ! 
Shine  out,  0  stars,  and  light 
My  darling's  pathway  bright, 
As  through  the  summer  night 
She  comes  to  me. 

And  this  entitled  "Lacrimas": 

God  send  me  tears! 

Loose  the  fierce  band  that  binds  my  tired  brain, 
Give  me  the  melting  heart  of  other  years, 

And  let  me  weep  again! 


We  pray  in  vain ! 

The  sullen  sky  flings  down  its  blaze  of  brass; 
The  joys  of  life  are  scorched  and  withery  pass: 

I  shall  not  weep  again. 

Strange  company  indeed  for  the  Pike  County  poems.  Hay 
himself  was  silent  about  the  ballads ;  he  seemed  reluctant  to  talk 
about  them ;  in  later  days  we  know  he  viewed  them  with  regret. 

With  Ilarte  the  problem  is  simpler.  He  wrote  from  the  first 
all  varieties  of  humorous  verse :  broad  farce  like  the  * '  Ballad  of 
the  Emeu'*  and  the  " California  Madrigal";  rollicking  parodies 
like  "The  Tale  of  a  Pony,"  "The  Willows.  After  Edgar  A. 
Poe,"  and  "The  Lost  Tails  of  Miletus ";  extravaganzas  like  "The 
Stage-Driver's  Story"  and  "To  the  Pliocene  Skull."  His  Pike 
verses  are  in  full  accord  with  the  greater  part  of  all  he  wrote 
both  in  verse  and  prose.  They  are  precisely  what  we  should 
expect  from  the  author  of  the  California  Pike  tales.  That  he 
was  in  one  small  part  of  his  work  an  echo  of  Hay  is  exceedingly 
unlikely.  If  the  Pike  County  Ballads  were,  as  Mark  Twain 
averred,  first  published  in  "obscure  Western  backwoods  jour 
nals"  before  "The  Heathen  Chinee"  had  appeared,  the  chances 
that  Harte  saw  them  are  so  small  that  it  is  hardly  worth  taking 
the  time  to  consider  them,  especially  when  it  is  further  averred 
that  they  "were  not  widely  copied."  At  present  the  advantage 
is  all  with  Harte;  at  present  he  may  be  hailed  as  the  father  of 
the  Pike  balladry  and  so  of  the  realistic  school  of  poetry  in 
America.  The  question  is  not  closed,  however,  nor  will  it  be 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE  COUNTY  91 

until  the  letters  and  journals  of  John  Hay  have  been  finally  given 
to  the  world. 

Ill 

But  even  though  the  Pike  County  Ballads  were  not  the  first 
in  the  field,  even  though  they  were  suggested  by  Harte's  work, 
they  were  none  the  less  valuable  and  influential.  Hay  wrote 
them  from  full  experience.  They  rang  true  at  every  point  as 
Harte's  sometimes  did  not.  Their  author  had  lived  from  his 
third  until  his  thirteenth  year  in  full  view  of  the  Mississippi 
River;  like  Mark  Twain  he  had  played  about  the  steamboat 
wharf,  picking  up  the  river  slang  and  hearing  the  rude  stories 
of  the  pilots  and  the  deck  hands.  Warsaw,  moreover,  was  on 
the  trail  of  the  Western  immigration,  a  place  where  all  the 
border  types  might  be  studied.  Later,  in  Pittsfield,  the  county 
seat  of  Pike  County,  he  saw  the  Pike  at  home  untouched  by  con 
tact  with  others — the  Golyers,  the  Frys,  the  Shelbys,  and  all  the 
other  drinkers  of  '  *  whisky-skins. ' ' 

Hay  has  painted  a  picture  not  only  of  a  few  highly  individ 
ualized  types ;  he  has  drawn  as  well  a  background  of  conditions. 
He  has  made  permanent  one  brief  phase  of  middle  Western 
history.  It  was  this  element  of  truth  to  nature — absolute  real 
ism — that  gave  the  poems  their  vogue  and  that  assured  them  per 
manence.  Harte's  ballads  were  read  as  something  new  and  as 
tonishing  and  theatric;  they  created  a  sensation,  but  they  did 
not  grip  and  convince.  Hay's  ballads  were  true  to  the  heart 
of  Western  life. 

The  new  literature  of  the  period  was  influenced  more  by  the 
Pike  County  Ballads  than  by  the  East  and  West  Poems.  The 
ballads  were  something  new  in  literature,  something  certainly 
not  Bostonian,  certainly  not  English — something  that  could  be 
described  only  as  " Western,"  fresh,  independent,  as  the  Pike 
himself  was  new  and  independent  among  the  types  of  humanity. 
John  Hay  was  therefore  a  pioneer,  a  creator,  a  leader.  His  was 
one  of  those  rare  germinal  minds  that  appear  now  and  then  to 
break  into  new  regions  and  to  scatter  seed  from  which  others  are 
to  reap  the  harvest. 


92  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

IV 

In  the  same  remarkable  year  in  which  appeared  East  and 
West  Poems  and  Pike  County  Ballads  and  so  many  other  notable 
first  volumes,  there  began  in  Hearth  and  Home  Edward  Eggles 
ton 's  study  of  early  Indiana  life,  entitled  The  Hoosier  School 
master.  Crude  as  the  novel  is  in  its  plot  and  hasty  as  it  is  in 
style  and  finish,  it  nevertheless  must  be  numbered  as  the  third 
leading  influence  upon  the  literature  of  the  period. 

The  extent  to  which  it  was  influenced  by  Harte  cannot  be 
determined.  The  brother  and  biographer  of  the  novelist  insists 
that  "the  quickening  influence  that  led  to  the  writing  of  the 
story"  was  the  reading  of  Taine's  Art  in  the  Netherlands.  He 
further  records  that  his  brother  one  day  said  to  him : 

"I  am  going  to  write  a  three-number  story  founded  upon  your  ex 
periences  at  Kicker's  Ridge,  and  call  it  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster." 
Then  he  set  forth  his  theory  of  art — that  the  artist,  whether  with  pen 
or  brush,  who  would  do  his  best  work,  must  choose  his  subjects  from 
the  life  that  he  knows.  He  cited  the  Dutch  painters  and  justified  his 
choice  of  what  seemed  an  unliterary  theme,  involving  rude  characters 
and  a  strange  dialect  perversion,  by  reference  to  Lowell's  success  with 
The  Biglow  Papers.9 

If  Eggleston  was  not  influenced  by  Harte,  then  it  is  certain 
that  he  drew  his  early  inspiration  from  the  same  fountain  head 
as  Harte  did.  Both  were  the  literary  offspring  of  Dickens.  One 
cannot  read  far  in  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster  without  recognizing 
the  manner  and  spirit  of  the  elder  novelist.  It  is  more  prom 
inent  in  his  earlier  work — in  the  short  story,  The  Christmas  Club, 
which  is  almost  a  parody,  in  the  portraits  of  Shockey  and  Haw 
kins  and  Miranda  Means,  and  in  the  occasional  moralizing  and 
goody-goodiness  of  tone. 

There  are  few  novelists,  however,  who  contain  fewer  echoes 
than  Eggleston.  He  was  a  more  original  and  more  accurate 
writer  than  Harte.  We  can  trust  his  backgrounds  and  his  pic 
ture  of  society  implicitly  at  every  point.  Harte  had  saturated 
himself  with  the  fiction  of  other  men;  he  had  made  himself  an 
artist  through  long  study  of  the  masters,  and  he  looked  at  his 
material  always  with  the  eye  of  an  artist.  He  selected  most 
carefully  his  viewpoint,  his  picturesque  details,  his  lights  and 

•  George  Gary  Eggleston's  The  First  of  the  Hoosiers,  297. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE  COUNTY  93 

shadows,  and  then  made  his  sketch.  Eggleston,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  made  no  study  of  his  art.  He  had  read  almost  no 
novels,  for,  as  he  expressed  it,  he  was  ''bred  'after  the  straitest 
sect  of  our  religion'  a  Methodist."  All  he  knew  of  plot  con 
struction  he  had  learned  from  reading  the  Greek  tragedies. 

His  weakness  was  his  strength.  He  silenced  his  conscience, 
which  rebelled  against  novels,  by  resolving  to  write  not  fiction 
but  truth.  He  would  make  a  sketch  of  life  as  it  actually  had 
been  lived  in  Indiana  in  his  boyhood,  a  sketch  that  should  be  as 
minute  in  detail  and  as  remorselessly  true  as  a  Millet  painting. 
It  was  not  to  be  a  novel;  it  was  to  be  history.  "No  man  is 
worthy, ' '  he  declared  in  the  preface  to  The  Circuit  Rider,  "  to  be 
called  a  novelist  who  does  not  endeavor  with  his  whole  soul  to 
produce  the  higher  form  of  history,  by  writing  truly  of  men  as 
they  are,  and  dispassionately  of  those  forms  of  life  that  come 
within  his  scope." 

When  Eggleston,  later  in  his  life,  abandoned  fiction  to  become 
a  historian,  there  was  no  break  in  his  work.  He  had  always  been 
a  historian.  Unlike  Harte,  he  had  embodied  in  his  novels  only 
those  things  that  had  been  a  part  of  his  own  life ;  he  had  written 
with  loving  recollection;  he  had  recorded  nothing  that  was  not 
true.  He  had  sought,  moreover,  to  make  his  novels  an  interpre 
tation  of  social  conditions  as  he  had  known  them  and  studied 
them.  "What  distinguishes  them  [his  novels],"  he  once  wrote, 
"from  other  works  of  fiction  is  the  prominence  which  they  give 
to  social  conditions;  that  the  individual  characters  are  here 
treated  to  a  greater  degree  than  elsewhere  as  parts  of  a  study 
of  society — as  in  some  sense  the  logical  result  of  the  environ 
ment."10 

Novels  like  The  End  of  the  World  and  The  Circuit  Rider  are 
in  reality  chapters  in  the  history  of  the  American  people.  They 
are  realistic  studies,  by  one  to  the  manner  born,  of  an  era  in  our 
national  life  that  has  vanished  forever. 


Edward  Eggleston  was  born  in  Vevay,  Indiana,  December  10, 
1837.  His  father,  a  member  of  an  old  Virginia  family,  after 
a  brilliant  course  at  William  and  Mary  College,  had  migrated 

10  Forum,  10:286. 


94  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

westward,  settled  in  Indiana,  and  just  as  he  was  making  himself 
a  notable  figure  in  the  law  and  the  politics  of  his  State,  had 
died  when  his  eldest  son,  Edward,  was  but  nine  years  old.  The 
son  had  inherited  both  his  father's  intellectual  brilliancy  and  his 
frail  physique.  Though  eager  for  knowledge,  he  was  able  all 
through  his  boyhood  to  attend  school  but  little,  and,  though  his 
father  had  provided  for  a  college  scholarship,  the  son  never 
found  himself  able  to  take  advantage  of  it.  He  was  largely  self- 
educated.  He  studied  whenever  he  could,  and  by  making  use 
of  all  his  opportunities  he  was  able  before  he  was  twenty  to 
master  by  himself  nearly  all  of  the  branches  required  for  a  col 
lege  degree. 

His  boyhood  was  a  wandering  one.  After  the  death  of  his 
father,  the  family  removed  to  New  Albany  and  later  to  Madison. 
At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  was  sent  to  southern  Indiana  to  live 
with  an  uncle,  a  large  landowner,  and  it  was  here  in  the  lowlands 
of  Decatur  County  that  he  had  his  first  chance  to  study  those 
primitive  Hoosier  types  that  later  he  was  to  make  permanent  in 
literature.  Still  later  he  lived  for  a  year  and  a  half  with  his 
father's  people  in  Virginia. 

Before  he  was  nineteen  he  had  chosen  his  profession.  The 
tense  Methodist  atmosphere  in  which  he  had  been  reared  had 
had  its  effect.  He  would  be  a  preacher,  a  circuit  rider,  one  of 
those  tireless  latter-day  apostles  that  had  formed  so  pictures! pic 
a  part  of  his  boyhood.  "How  did  he  get  his  theological  educa 
tion?  It  used  to  be  said  that  Methodist  preachers  were  educated 
by  the  old  ones  telling  the  young  ones  all  they  knew ;  but  besides 
this  oral  instruction  [he]  carried  in  his  saddle  bags  John  Wes 
ley's  simple,  solid  sermons,  Charles  Wesley's  hymns,  and  a 
Bible."11 

Eggleston's  saddle  bags  contained  far  more  than  these.  He 
read  Whitfield  and  Thomas  a  Kempis,  the  (Edipus  Tyrannus  in 
the  Greek,  and  all  the  history  and  biography  that  he  could  buy 
or  borrow.  His  "appointment"  was  in  southeastern  Indiana,  a 
four-weeks'  circuit  with  ten  preaching  places  far  apart  in  the 
Ohio  River  bottoms  with  their  scattering  population  of  malarial 
Pikes  and  their  rude  border  civilization.  He  began  his  work 
with  enthusiasm.  He  lived  with  his  people;  he  entered  inti 
mately  into  their  affairs ;  he  studied  at  first  hand  their  habits  of 

n  The  Circuit  Rider,  Chap.  XX. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE  COUNTY  95 

life  and  of  thought.  It  was  an  ideal  preparation  for  a  novelist, 
but  the  rough  life  was  in  no  way  fitted  for  his  frail  physique. 
After  six  months  he  broke  down  almost  completely  and  was  sent 
into  the  pine  forests  of  Minnesota  to  recuperate.  For  several 
years  he  was  connected  with  the  Minnesota  conference.  He  held 
pastorates  in  St.  Paul  and  other  places,  but  his  health  still  con 
tinuing  precarious,  he  at  length  retired  to  Chicago  as  an  editor 
of  the  Little  Corporal,  a  juvenile  paper  later  merged  in  St. 
Nicholas.  This  step  turned  his  attention  to  literature  as  a  pro 
fession.  From  Chicago  he  was  called  to  Brooklyn  to  the  staff  of 
the  Independent,  of  which  he  later  became  the  editor,  and  the 
rest  of  his  life,  save  for  a  five  years'  pastorate  in  Brooklyn,  he 
devoted  to  literature. 

VI 

The  Western  novels  of  Edward  Eggleston  are  seven  in  num 
ber.  One  of  them,  The  Mystery  of  Metropolisville,  deals  with 
frontier  life  in  Minnesota,  a  stirring  picture  of  a  vital  era ;  all  the 
others  are  laid  in  Indiana  or  eastern  Ohio  in  that  malarial,  river- 
bottom,  Pike  area  that  had  been  familiar  to  his  boyhood.  Two 
of  them  are  historical  novels:  The  Circuit  Rider,  which  deals 
with  Indiana  life  during  the  early  years  of  the  century  before  the 
"War  of  1812,  and  The  Graysons,  a  stirring  tale  involving  Abra 
ham  Lincoln,  who  had  lived  in  the  State  from  1816  to  1830.  The 
End  of  the  World  described  the  Millerite  excitement  of  Eggles 
ton 's  early  boyhood;  the  others,  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  Roxy, 
and  The  Hoosier  Schoolboy,  were  studies  of  sections  of  life  that 
he  had  known  intimately.  One  other  novel  he  wrote,  The  Faith 
Doctor,  the  scene  of  which  is  laid  in  New  York,  and  many  short 
stories  and  juveniles. 

The  atmosphere  and  the  characters  of  these  "Western  stories 
strike  us  as  strangely  unreal  and  exaggerated  to-day.  In  his  short 
story,  The  Gunpowder  Plot,  Eggleston  complained  that  "when 
ever  one  writes  with  photographic  exactness  of  frontier  life  he 
is  accused  of  inventing  improbable  things."  It  seems  indeed 
like  a  world  peopled  by  Dickens,  these  strange  phantasmagoria, 
"these  sharp  contrasts  of  corn-shuckings  and  camp-meetings,  of 
wild  revels  followed  by  wild  revivals;  these  contrasts  of  high 
wayman  and  preacher;  this  melange  of  picturesque  simplicity, 
grotesque  humor,  and  savage  ferocity,  of  abandoned  wickedness 


96  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

and  austere  piety.*'12  But  grotesque  and  unreal  as  it  is,  it  is 
nevertheless  a  true  picture  of  the  West  in  which  Lincoln  spent 
his  boyhood.  Every  detail  and  every  personage  in  all  the  novels 
had  an  exact  counterpart  somewhere  in  that  stirring  era. 

The  novelist,  however,  is  not  content  with  a  mere  graphic 
picture.  He  is  a  philosopher.  The  Circuit  Rider,  for  instance, 
the  most  valuable  study  in  the  series,  brings  home  to  the  reader 
the  truth  of  the  author's  dictum  that  "Methodism  was  to  the 
West  what  Puritanism  was  to  New  England."  "In  a  true  pic 
ture  of  this  life,"  he  adds,  "neither  the  Indian  nor  the  hunter 
is  the  center-piece,  but  the  circuit  rider.  More  than  any  one  else, 
the  early  circuit  preachers  brought  order  out  of  this  chaos.  In 
no  other  class  was  the  real  heroic  element  so  finely  displayed." 

The  figure  of  the  circuit  rider  as  he  strides  through  the  book, 
thundering  the  "Old  Homeric  epithets  of  early  Methodism,  ex 
ploding  them  like  bomb-shells — 'you  are  hair-hung  and  breeze- 
shaken  over  hell,'  "  has  almost  an  epic  quality.  "Magruder  was 
a  short  stout  man,  with  wide  shoulders,  powerful  arms,  shaggy 
brows,  and  bristling  black  hair.  He  read  the  hymns  two  lines 
at  a  time,  and  led  the  singing  himself.  He  prayed  with  the 
utmost  sincerity,  but  in  a  voice  that  shook  the  cabin  windows  and 
gave  the  simple  people  a  deeper  reverence  for  the  dreadfulness 
of  the  preacher's  message." 

It  was  his  business  to  preach  once  or  twice  a  day  and  three 
times  on  the  Sabbath  in  a  parish  that  had  no  western  bounds. 
He  talked  of  nothing  but  of  sin  and  wrath  and  judgment  to  come. 
His  arrival  in  the  settlement  cast  over  everything  an  atmosphere 
of  awe.  He  aroused  violent  antagonisms.  The  rough  element 
banded  together  to  destroy  his  influence.  They  threatened  him 
with  death  if  he  entered  certain  territory,  but  he  never  hesi 
tated.  He  could  fight  as  well  as  he  could  pray.  They  would 
fall  broken  and  bruised  before  his  savage  onslaught  and  later 
fall  in  agony  of  repentance  before  his  fiery  preaching.  His  ser 
mons  came  winged  with  power. 

He  hit  right  and  left.  The  excitable  crowd  swayed  with  consterna 
tion,  as  in  a  rapid  and  vehement  utterance,  he  denounced  their  sins, 
with  the  particularity  of  one  who  had  been  familiar  with  them  all  his 
life.  .  .  .  Slowly  the  people  pressed  forward  off  the  fences.  All  at 
once  there  was  a  loud  bellowing  cry  from  some  one  who  had  fallen 

12  Preface  to  The  Circuit  Rider. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  PIKE  COUNTY  97 

prostrate  outside  the  fence,  and  who  began  to  cry  aloud  as  if  the  por 
tals  of  an  endless  perdition  were  yawning  in  his  face.  .  .  .  This  out 
burst  of  agony  was  fuel  to  the  flames,  and  the  excitement  now  spread 
to  all  parts  of  the  audience.  .  .  .  Captain  Lumsden  .  .  .  started  for 
his  horse  and  was  seized  with  that  curious  nervous  affection  which 
originated  in  these  religious  excitements  and  disappeared  with  them. 
He  jerked  violently — his  jerking  only  adding  to  his  excitement. 

Eggleston  has  caught  with  vividness  the  spirit  of  this  heroic 
age  and  brought  it  to  us  so  that  it  actually  lives  again.  The 
members  of  the  conference  at  Hickory  Ridge  have  gathered  to 
hear  the  bishop  read  the  appointments  for  the  year : 

The  brethren,  still  in  sublime  ignorance  of  their  destiny,  sang  fer 
vently  that  fiery  hymn  of  Charles  Wesley's: 

Jesus,  the  name  high  over  all, 

In  hell  or  earth  or  sky, 
Angels  and  men  before  him  fall, 

And  devils  fear  and  fly. 

And  when  they  reached  the  last  stanzas  there  was  the  ring  of  soldiers 
ready  for  battle  in  their  martial  voices.  That  some  of  them  would  die 
from  exposure,  malaria,  or  accident  during  the  next  year  was  prob 
able.  Tears  came  to  their  eyes,  and  they  involuntarily  began  to  grasp 
the  hands  of  those  who  stood  next  to  them  as  they  approached  tha 
climax  of  the  hymn..  .  .  . 

Happy  if  with  my  latest  breath 

I  may  but  gasp  His  name, 
Preach  Him  to  all,  and  cry  in  death, 

"Behold,  behold  the  Lamb!  " 

Then,  with  suffused  eyes,  they  resumed  their  seats,  and  the  venerable 
Asbury,  with  calmness  and  a  voice  faltering  with  age,  made  them  a 
brief  address: 

"General  Wolfe,"  said  the  British  Admiralty,  "will  you  go  and  take 
Quebec?"  "I'll  do  it  or  die,"  he  replied.  Here  the  bishop  paused, 
looked  round  about  upon  them,  and  added,  with  a  voice  full  of  emo 
tion,  "He  went  and  did  both.  We  send  you  first  to  take  the  country 
allotted  to  you.  We  want  only  men  who  are  determined  to  do  it  or  die ! 
Some  of  you,  dear  brethren,  will  do  both.  If  you  fall,  let  us  hear  that 
you  fell  like  Methodist  preachers  at  your  post,  face  to  the  foe,  and  the 
shout  of  victory  on  your  lips!" 

The  effect  of  this  speech  was  beyond  description.  There  were  sobs, 
and  cries  of  "Amen,"  "God  grant  it,"  "Hallelujah!"  from  every  part 
of  the  old  log  church.  Every  man  was  ready  for  the  hardest  place,  if 
he  must. 

With  the  circuit  rider  Eggleston  undoubtedly  added  another 
type  to  the  gallery  of  American  fiction. 


98  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 


VII 

The  novels  of  Eggleston  have  not  the  compression,  the  finish, 
the  finesse  of  Harte's.  Some  of  his  works,  notably  The  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster,  were  written  at  full  speed  with  the  press  clatter 
ing  behind  the  author.  Often  there  is  to  the  style  a  mawkish 
Sunday-school  juvenile  flavor.  There  is  often  a  lack  of  art,  of 
distinction,  of  constructive  skill.  But  there  are  compensations 
even  for  such  grave  defects.  There  is  a  vividness  of  character 
ization  and  of  description  that  can  be  compared  even  with  that  of 
Dickens;  there  is  the  ability  to  sketch  a  scene  that  clings  to  the 
memory  in  all  its  details.  The  trial  scene  in  The  Graysotis  is  not 
surpassed  for  vividness  and  narrative  power  in  any  novel  of  the 
period.  And,  finally,  there  is  a  realism  in  background  and  atmos 
phere  that  makes  the  novels  real  sources  of  history. 

The  influence  of  Eggleston 's  work  was  enormous.  He  helped 
to  create  a  new  reading  public,  a  public  made  up  of  those  who, 
like  himself,  had  had  scruples  against  novel  reading.  He  was  an 
influence  in  the  creating  of  a  new  and  healthy  realism  in  America. 
What  Hay  was  to  the  new  school  of  local  color  poets,  Eggleston 
was  to  the  new  school  of  novelists.  Harte  was  a  romanticist; 
Eggleston  was  a  realist.  From  Harte  came  the  first  conception 
of  a  new  and  powerful  literature  of  the  West.  Eggleston  was 
the  directing  hand  that  turned  the  current  of  this  new  literature 
into  the  channel  of  realism. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

JOHN  HAT.  (1838-1905.)  The  Pike  County  Ballads  and  Other  Pieces, 
(167  pages),  1871;  Jim  Bludso  of  the  Prairie  Belle,  and  Little  Breeches, 
illustrated  by  Eytinge  (23  pages),  1871;  Castilian  Days,  1871;  The  Bread- 
ii-inmrs,  1883;  Poems  by  John  Hay,  1890  and  1899;  A  Poet  in  Exile: 
Early  letters  of  John  Hay.  Edited  by  Caroline  Ticknor,  1910. 

KI-WARD  EGGLESTON.  (1837-1902.)  Mr.  Blake's  Walking -8 tick,  1870; 
Tin  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  1871;  The  End  of  the  World,  1872;  The  Mystery 
of  Metropolisville,  1873;  The  Circuit  Rider,  1874;  The  Schoolmaster's 
Stories,  1874;  Roxy,  1878;  The  Hoosier  Schoolboy,  1883;  Queer  Stories, 
1884;  The  Craysons,  1888;  The  Faith  Doctor,  1891;  Duffels  (short  stories), 
1893;  The  First  of  the  Hoosiers,  by  George  Gary  Eggleston,  1903. 


CHAPTER  VI 

JOAQUIN   MILLER 

The  work  of  Harte  and  even  of  Hay  is  the  work  of  an  on 
looker  rather  than  a  sharer.  One  feels  that  both  were  studying 
their  picturesque  surroundings  objectively  for  the  sake  of 
"copy";  but  Joaquin  Miller,  like  Mark  Twain,  may  be  said  to 
have  emerged  from  the  materials  he  worked  in.  He  could  write 
in  his  later  years,  "My  poems  are  literally  my  autobiography." 
"If  you  care  to  read  further  of  my  life,  making  allowance  for 
poetic  license,  you  will  find  these  [poems]  literally  true."  In 
some  ways  he  is  a  more  significant  figure  than  either  Harte  or 
Hay.  No  American  writer,  not  even  Thoreau  or  Whitman,  has 
ever  been  more  uniquely  individual,  and  none,  not  even  Mark 
Twain,  has  woven  into  his  writings  more  things  that  are 
peculiarly  American,  or  has  worked  with  a  more  thorough  first 
hand  knowledge  of  the  picturesque  elements  that  went  into  the 
making  of  the  new  West.  He  is  the  poet  of  the  American  west 
ward  march,  the  poet  of  "the  great  American  desert,"  the  poet 
preeminently  of  the  mountain  ranges  from  Alaska  to  Nicaragua 
as  John  Muir  is  their  prose  interpreter. 


The  life  of  Miller  is  a  series  of  foot-notes  to  his  poems.  He 
was  born  on  the  line  of  the  westward  march.  In  the  valuable 
autobiographical  preface  to  the  Bear  edition  of  his  poems  he 
writes :  * '  My  cradle  was  a  covered  wagon,  pointed  west.  I  was 
born  in  a  covered  wagon,  I  am  told,  at  or  about  the  time  it  crossed 
the  line  dividing  Indiana  from  Ohio."  That  was  in  1841,  and 
the  name  given  him  was  Cincinnatus  Hiner  Miller.  His  parents, 
like  those  of  Mark  Twain,  were  of  that  restless  generation  that 
could  abide  nowhere  long,  but  must  press  ever  on  and  on  west 
ward.  His  mother 's  people  had  migrated  from  the  Yadkin  River 
country  in  North  Carolina  with  the  Boones,  "devoted  Quakers  in 

99 


100  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

search  of  a  newer  land";  his  grandfather  Miller  was  a  Scotch 
man,  a  restless  pioneer  who  had  fallen  at  Fort  Meigs,  leaving  a 
family  of  small  children  to  come  up  as  they  could  in  the  wilder 
ness.  One  of  them,  the  father  of  the  poet,  picked  up  in  a  varied 
career  along  the  border  certain  elements  of  book  learning  that 
enabled  him  to  teach  school  in  the  settlement  towns  of  Ohio  and 
Indiana. 

The  boy's  earliest  memories  were  of  the  frontier  with  its  land 
clearing,  its  Indian  neighbors,  and  its  primitive  hardships. 
Schooling  he  received  at  the  hands  of  his  father.  The  first  book 
that  he  could  remember  was  Fremont's  Explorations,  read  aloud 
to  the  family  by  the  father  until  all  knew  it  literally  by  heart, 
maps  and  all.  Lured  by  its  enthusiastic  descriptions  and  by  re 
ports  of  a  former  pupil  who  had  gone  to  Oregon  and  by  the  new 
act  of  Congress  which  gave  to  every  homesteader  six  hundred  and 
forty  acres  of  land  free,  on  March  17, 1852,  with  * '  two  big  heavily 
laden  wagons,  with  eight  yoke  of  oxen  to  each,  a  carriage  and  two 
horses  for  mother  and  baby  sister,  and  a  single  horse  for  the  three 
boys  to  ride,"  the  family  set  out  across  the  wild  continent  of 
America.  "The  distance,"  he  records,  "counting  the  contours 
of  often  roundabout  ways,  was  quite,  or  nearly,  three  thousand 
miles.  The  time  was  seven  months  and  five  days.  There  were 
no  bridges,  no  railroad  levels,  nothing  of  the  sort.  "We  had  only 
the  road  as  nature  had  made  it.  Many  times,  at  night,  after 
ascending  a  stream  to  find  a  ford,  we  could  look  back  and  see 
our  smoldering  camp-fires  of  the  day  before." 

That  heroic  journey  into  the  unknown  West  with  its  awful 
dangers,  its  romantic  strangeness,  its  patriarchal  conditions,  its 
constant  demand  for  self-dependence,  made  an  indelible  impress 
on  the  young  lad.  It  was  a  journey  of  Argonauts,  one  of  the 
thousands  of  journeys  that  made  picturesque  a  whole  epoch.  He 
has  described  it  in  some  of  the  most  stirring  of  his  poems.  All 
through  his  poetry  occur  stanzas  like  this : 

What  strength !  what  strife !  what  rude  unrest ! 
What  shocks!  what  half-shaped  armies  met! 
A  mighty  nation  moving1  West, 
With  all  its  steely  sinews  set 
Against  the  living  forests.    Hear 
The  shouts,  the  shots  of  pioneer, 
The  rending  forests,  rolling  wheels, 
As  if  some  half-checked  army  reels, 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  ,401 

Recoils,  redoubles,  comes  again, 
Loud-sounding  like  a  hurricane. 

He  has  described  it  too  in  prose  that  is  really  stirring.  His  dedi 
catory  preface  to  The  Ship  in  the  Desert,  London,  1876,  is  a  poem 
of  the  Whitman  order.  Note  a  stanza  like  this : 

How  dark  and  deep,  how  sullen,  strong  and  lionlike  the  mighty 
Missouri  rolled  between  his  walls  of  untracked  wood  and  cleft  the  un 
known  domain  of  the  middle  world  before  us!  Then  the  frail  and 
buffeted  rafts  on  the  river,  the  women  and  children  huddled  together, 
the  shouts  of  the  brawny  men  as  they  swam  with  the  bellowing  cattle, 
the  cows  in  the  stormy  stream  eddying,  whirling,  spinning  about,  call 
ing  to  their  young,  their  bright  horns  shining  in  the  sun.  The  wild 
men  waiting  on  the  other  side;  painted  savages,  leaning  on  their  bows, 
despising  our  weakness,  opening  a  way,  letting  us  pass  on  to  the  un 
known  distances,  where  they  said  the  sun  and  moon  lay  down  together 
and  brought  forth  the  stars.  The  long  and  winding  lines  of  wagons, 
the  graves  by  the  wayside,  the  women  weeping  together  as  they  passed 
on.  Then  hills,  then  plains,  parched  lands  like  Syria,  dust  and  alkali, 
cold  streams  with  woods,  camps  by  night,  great  wood  fires  in  circles, 
tents  in  the  center  like  Caesar's  battle  camps,  painted  men  that  passed 
like  shadows,  showers  of  arrows,  the  wild  beasts  howling  from  the  hills. 

Two  years  with  his  parents  on  the  new  Oregon  farm,  and  the 
lad  ran  away  to  the  mines.  "Go,  I  must.  The  wheels  of  the 
covered  wagon  in  which  I  had  been  born  were  whirling  and 
whirling,  and  I  must  be  off."  For  a  time  he  was  cook  in  a 
mining  camp,  but  it  was  work  impossible  for  a  boy  of  thirteen, 
and  soon  he  was  on  his  wanderings  again,  first  with,  one  Ream, 
an  adventurer,  then  with  Mountain  Joe,  a  trader  in  half-wild 
horses.  He  was  drawn  into  Gibson's  fight  with  the  Modocs,  was 
wounded  frightfully  by  an  arrow  that  pierced  close  to  the  base 
of  the  brain,  and  later  was  nursed  back  to  life  by  a  squaw  who 
had  adopted  him  in  place  of  her  son  who  had  fallen  in  the  battle. 
"When  the  spring  came  and  Mount  Shasta  stood  out  white  and 
glorious  above  the  clouds,  I  hailed  him  as  a  brother.  ' '  And  again 
he  stole  away  and  joined  another  band  of  Indians.  "When  the 
Modocs  arose  one  night  and  massacred  eighteen  men,  every  man 
in  the  Pit  River  Valley,  I  alone  was  spared  and  spared  only  be 
cause  I  was  Los  bobo,  the  fool.  Then  more  battles  and  two  more 
wounds."  For  a  long  time  his  mind  was  like  that  of  a  child. 
The  Indians  indeed,  as  he  records,  treated  him  "as  if  [he]  had 
been  newly  born  to  their  tribe." 


102  AMKRHW  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Soon  I  was  stronger,  body  and  soul.  The  women  crave  me  gold — 
from  whence? — and  I  being  a  "renegade,"  descended  to  San  Francisco 
and  set  sail  for  Boston,  but  stopped  at  Nicaragua  with  Walker.  Thence 
up  the  coast  to  Oregon,  when  strong  enough.  I  went  home,  went  to 
college  some,  taught  school  some,  studied  law  at  home  some;  but  ever 
and  ever  the  lure  of  the  mountains  called  and  called,  and  I  could  not 
keep  my  mind  on  my  books.  But  I  could  keep  my  mind  on  the  perils 
I  had  passed.  I  could  write  of  them,  and  I  did  write  of  them,  almost 
every  day.  The  Tale  of  the  Tall  Alcalde,  Oregonian,  Calif o rnian,  With 
Walker  in  Xiraragua — I  had  lived  all  these  and  more;  and  they  were 
now  a  part  of  my  existence.  .  .  .  Meantime  I  was  admitted  to  the  bar. 
Then  came  the  discovery  of  gold  in  Idaho,  Montana,  and  so  on,  and 
I  was  off  like  a  rocket  with  the  rest. 

To  call  Miller  illiterate,  as  many,  especially  in  printing  offices 
which  have  handled  his  copy,  have  done,  is  hardly  fair.  His 
father,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  a  schoolmaster  with  the 
Scotch  reverence  for  serious  books  and  for  education,  and  the 
boy's  early  schooling  was  not  neglected.  To  say,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  many,  including  the  poet  himself,  have  said,  that  he 
received  a  college  education,  is  also  to  speak  without  knowledge. 
He  did  complete  a  course  in  Columbia  University,  Eugene, 
Oregon,  in  1859,  but  it  was  an  institution  in  no  way  connected 
with  the  present  University  of  Oregon.  It  was,  rather,  a  mission 
school  maintained  by  the  Methodist  Church  South,  and,  according 
to  Professor  Herbert  C.  Howe  of  the  University  of  Oregon,  * '  its 
instruction  was,  at  its  utmost  stretch,  not  enough  to  carry  its 
pupils  through  the  first  half  of  a  high  school  course,  and  most 
of  its  pupils  were  of  grammar  grade."  It  was  closed  suddenly 
early  in  the  Civil-War  period  because  of  the  active  Southern 
sympathies  of  its  president,  who  was  himself  very  nearly  the 
whole  "university."  It  is  significant  that  at  almost  the  same 
time  the  Eugene  Democratic  Register  edited  by  Miller  was  sup 
pressed  for  alleged  disloyalty  to  the  Union. 

For  a  period  the  poet  undoubtedly  did  apply  himself  with 
diligence  to  books.  Of  his  fellow  students  at  Eugene  he  has  re 
corded,  "I  have  never  since  found  such  determined  students 
and  omnivorous  readers.  We  had  all  the  books  and  none  of  the 
follies  of  the  great  centers."  The  mania  for  writing  had  seized 
him  early.  Assisted  by  his  father,  he  had  recorded  the  events 
of  his  trip  across  the  plains  in  a  journal  afterwards  burned  with 
his  parental  home  in  Oregon.  "The  first  tiling-  of  mine  in  print 
was  the  valedictory  class  poem,  '  Columbia  College. '  ' '  Undoubt- 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  103 

edly  during  this  period  he  read  widely  and  eagerly.  "My  two 
brothers  and  my  sister  were  by  my  side,  our  home  with  our  par 
ents,  and  we  lived  entirely  to  ourselves,  and  really  often  made 
ourselves  ill  from  too  much  study.  We  were  all  school  teachers 
when  not  at  college." 

Living  away  from  the  centers  of  culture,  with  books  as  exotic 
things  that  came  from  without,  almost  as  from  another  world, 
Miller,  like  many  another  isolated  soul,  grew  to  maturity  with  the 
feeling  that  something  holy  lay  about  the  creation  of  literature 
and  that  authors,  especially  poets,  were  beings  apart  from  the 
rest  of  men.  Poetry  became  to  him  more  than  an  art :  it  became 
a  religion.  "Poetry,"  he  declared  in  his  first  London  preface, 
"is  with  me  a  passion  which  defies  reason."  It  was  an  honest 
declaration.  During  the  sixties  as  express  messenger  in  the 
Idaho  gold  fields,  as  newspaper  editor,  and  judge,  he  wrote  verse 
continually — "I  lived  among  the  stars" — but  he  preserved  of 
all  he  wrote  only  a  few  rather  colorless  pieces  which  he  published 
in  1868  with  the  title  Specimens.  The  next  year  he  issued  at 
Portland,  Oregon,  Joaquin  et  al,  a  book  of  one  hundred  and 
twenty-four  pages.  It  was  his  salute  to  the  literary  world.  He 
addressed  it  "To  the  Bards  of  San  Francisco  Bay,"  and  his 
address  sheds  light  upon  the  timid  young  poet : 

I  am  as  one  unlearned,  uncouth, 
From  country  come  to  join  the  youth 
Of  some  sweet  town  in  quest  of  truth, 

A  skilless  Northern  Nazarine, 
From  whence  no  good  can  ever  come. 
I  stand  apart  as  one  that 's  dumb : 
I  hope,  I  fear,  I  hasten  home, 

I  plunge  into  my  wilds  again. 

He  followed  his  book  down  to  what  was  to  him  the  glorious  city 
of  art  and  of  soul  that  would  welcome  him  with  rapture,  for 
was  he  too  not  a  bard  ?  Says  Charles  W.  Stoddard,  ' '  Never  had 
a  breezier  bit  of  human  nature  dawned  upon  me  this  side  of  th»t 
South  Seas  than  that  poet  of  the  Sierra  when  he  came  to  San 
Francisco  in  1870.  "1 

But  the  great  Western  city,  as  did  New  York  a  few  months 
later,  went  on  totally  unaware  of  his  advent.  The  bards  even 
of  San  Francisco  Bay  did  not  come  to  the  borders  of  the  town  to 

i  Eaits  and  Entrances,  223. 


104  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1570 

welcome  the  new  genius.  They  seemed  unaware  of  his  pres 
ence.  Harte  was  inclined  to  be  sarcastic,  but  finally  allowed  the 
Overland  Monthly  to  say  a  word  of  faint  praise  for  the  young 
poet,  despite  what  it  termed  his  *  4  pawing  and  curvetting.  "  'His 
passion/'  it  declared  in  a  review  written  probably  by  Ina  Cool- 
brith,  "is  truthful  and  his  figures  flow  rather  from  his  percep 
tion  than  his  sentiment."  But  that  was  all.  He  considered 
himself  persecuted.  His  associates  in  the  law  had  made  fun  of 
the  legal  term  in  the  title  of  his  book,  had  hailed  him  as  "Joa- 
quin"  Miller,  and  had  treated  him  as  a  joke.  "I  was  so  unpop 
ular  that  when  I  asked  a  place  on  the  Supreme  Bench  at  the 
Convention,  I  was  derisively  told:  *  Better  stick  to  poetry.' 
Three  months  later,  September  1.  IS  70,  I  was  kneeling  at  the 
grave  of  Burns,  I  really  expected  to  die  there  in  the  land  of 
my  fathers,"  He  would  support  himself  as  Irving  had  sup 
ported  himself  with  his  pen.  He  sought  cheap  quarters  in  the 
great  city  and  began  to  write.  February  1,  1871,  he  recorded 
in  his  diary  :  "I  have  nearly  given  up  this  journal  to  get  out 
a  book.  I  wanted  to  publish  a  great  drama  called  'Oregonian/ 
but  finally  wrote  an  easy-going  little  thing  which  I  called  'Ara- 
zonian,'  and  put  the  two  together  and  called  the  little  book 
Pacific  Poems.  It  has  been  ready  for  the  printer  a  long  time.  '  ' 
He  took  the  manuscript  from  publisher  to  publisher  until, 
as  he  declares,  even.*  house  in  London  had  rejected  it.  His  re 
ception  by  Murray  shows  the  general  estimate  of  poetry  by  Lon 
don  publishers  in  the  early  seventies: 

He  held  his  head  to  one  side,  flipped  the  leaves,  looked  in,  jerked 
his  head  bade,  looked  in  again,  misted  his  head  like  a  giraffe,  and 
then  lifted  his  long  finger: 

"Aye,  now,  don't  you  know  poetry  won't  dot  Poetry  won't  do, 
don't'you  knowf 

''But  will  you  not  read  it,  please  f 

.  no,  no.    No  use,  no  use,  don't  you 


Then  in  desperation  he  printed  a  part  of  it  at  his  own  expense 
under  the  title  Pacific  Poems  and  sent  out  copies  broadcast  to 
the  press.  was  venture  so  unpromising  crowned  with  re 

sults  so  startling.  The  little  book  was  hailed  everywhere  as 
something  remarkable.  The  St.  James  Gazette  declared  that 
the  poem  4*Arazonian'*  —  that  was  Miller's  early  spelling  of  the 
word  —  was  by  Browning.  The  new  author  was  traced  to  his 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  105 

miserable  lodgings  and  made  a  lion  of,  and  before  the  year  was 
over  the  whole  original  manuscript  of  Pacific  Poems  had  been 
brought  out  in  a  beautiful  edition  with  the  title  Hongs  of  the 
Sierras.  Its  author's  real  name  did  not  appear  upon  the  title 
page.  The  poems  were  by  "Joaquin  Miller,"  a  name  destined 
completely  to  supersede  the  more  legal  patronymic.  '  *  The  third 
poem  in  my  first  London  book,"  he  explains,  "was  called  'Cali 
fornia,'  but  it  was  called  'Joaquin'  in  the  Oregon  book.  And 
it  was  from  this  that  I  was,  in  derision,  called  'Joaquin.'  I 
kept  the  name  and  the  poem,  too,  till  both  were  at  least  re 
spected."  * 

Few  American  books  have  been  received  by  the  English  press, 
or  any  press  for  that  matter,  with  such  unanimous  enthusiasm. 
Miller  was  the  literary  discovery  of  the  year.  The  London 
Times  declared  the  book  the  ''most  remarkable  utterance  Amer 
ica  has  yet  given";  the  Evening  Standard  called  it  poetry  "the 
most  original  and  powerful."  The  pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood 
counted  its  author  as  one  of  their  own  number,  and  gave  him  a 
dinner.  Browning  hailed  him  as  an  equal,  and  the  press  every 
where  celebrated  him  as  "the  Oregon  Byron."  The  reason  for 
it  all  can  be  explained  best,  perhaps,  in  words  that  W.  M.  Rossetti 
used  in  his  long  review  of  the  poet  in  the  London  Academy: 
"Picturesque  things  picturesquely  put  .  .  .  indicating  strange, 
outlandish,  and  romantic  experiences."  The  same  words  might 
have  been  used  by  a  reviewer  of  Byron's  first  Eastern  romance 
on  that  earlier  morning  when  he  too  had  awakened  to  find  him 
self  famous.  The  book,  moreover,  was  felt  to  be  the  promise  of 
stronger  things  to  come.  "It  is  a  book,"  continued  Rossetti, 
"through  whose  veins  the  blood  pulsates  with  an  abounding  rush, 
while  gorgeous  subtropical  suns,  resplendent  moons,  and  abash 
ing  majesties  of  mountain  form  ring  round  the  gladiatorial  hu 
man  life." 

II 

Of  Miller's  subsequent  career,  his  picturesque  travels,  his 
log  cabin  life  in  Washington,  D.  C.,  his  Klondike  experiences 
and  the  like,  it  is  not  necessary  to  speak.  There  was  always  an 
element  of  the  sensational  about  his  doings  and  his  equipment. 
To  the  majority  of  men  he  was  a  poseur  and  even  a  mountebank. 

2  Songs  of  the  Sierras,  Bear  edition,  133. 


106  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

At  times  indeed  it  was  hard  for  even  his  friends  to  take  him 
with  seriousness.  How  was  one,  for  instance,  to  approach  in  seri 
ous  mood  As  It  Was  in  the  Beginning,  1903,  a  book  twelve  inches 
by  five,  printed  on  coarse  manila  wrapping  stock,  bound  in  thin 
yellow  paper,  and  having  on  the  cover  an  enormous  stork  hold 
ing  in  his  bill  President  Roosevelt  as  an  infant?  Those  who 
were  closest  to  him,  however,  are  unanimous  in  declaring  that  all 
this  eccentricity  was  but  the  man  himself,  the  expression  of  his 
own  peculiar  individuality,  and  that  he  was  great  enough  to  rise 
above  the  conventionalities  of  life  and  be  himself.  C.  W.  Stod- 
dard,  who  of  all  men,  perhaps,  knew  him  most  intimately  in  his 
earlier  period,  maintained  that 

People  who  knew  him  wondered  but  little  at  his  pose,  his  Spanish 
mantle  and  sombrero,  his  fits  of  abstraction  or  absorption,  his  old- 
school  courtly  air  in  the  presence  of  women — even  the  humblest  of  the 
sex.  He  was  thought  eccentric  to  the  last  degree,  a  bundle  of  affecta 
tions,  a  crank — even  a  freak.  Now  I  who  have  known  Joaquin  Miller 
as  intimately  as  any  man  could  know  him,  know  that  these  mannerisms 
are  natural  to  him;  they  have  developed  naturally;  they  are  his  second 
nature.8 

Hamlin  Garland,  Charles  F.  Lummis,  and  many  others  who 
have  known  the  poet  intimately  have  spoken  in  the  same  way. 
His  mannerisms  and  his  eccentric  point  of  view  arose  from  the 
isolation  in  which  his  formative  years  were  passed,  his  ignorance 
of  life,  his  long  association  with  highly  individualized  men  in  the 
mines  and  the  camps  and  the  mountains,  and  his  intimate  knowl 
edge  of  the  picturesque  Spanish  life  of  Mexico  and  Central 
America.  His  education  had  been  peculiar,  even  unique.  "All 
that  I  am,"  he  declares  in  My  Own  Story*  "or  ever  hope  to  be 
I  owe  them  [the  Indians].  I  owe  no  white  man  anything  at  all." 
He  had  never  been  a  boy,  he  was  utterly  without  sense  of  humor, 
and  he  had  a  native  temperament  aside  from  all  this,  that  was 
all  his  own — need  we  say  more? 

I 'rite  and  Entrances,  231. 

«  "My  Life  Among  the  Modocs,  Unwritten  History,  Paquita,  My  Life 
Among  the  Indians,  My  Own  Story,  or  whatever  other  name  enterprising 
or  piratical  publishers,  Europe  or  America,  may  have  chosen  to  givr  tin- 
one  prose  book  Mulford  and  I  put  out  in  London  during  the  Modoc  War." 
— B^ar  edition,  iv:  169. 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  107 


III 

When  one  approaches  the  poetry  of  Joaquin  Miller,  one  is  at 
first  confused  by  the  lavishness  of  it,  the  strength,  and  then 
swiftly  the  dreary  weakness  of  it.  It  is  like  his  own  landscapes, 
abounding  in  vast  barrens  and  flats,  with  here  and  there  glimpses 
of  glittering  peaks  and  vast  ranges,  and  now  and  then  oases 
full  of  marvelous  revel  of  color  and  strange  birds  and  tropic 
flowers.  Three-fourths  of  all  he  wrote  is  lifeless  and  worthless, 
but  the  other  quarter  is  to  American  poetry  what  the  Rockies 
are  to  the  American  landscape.  Few  poets  have  so  needed  an 
editor  with  courage  to  reject  and  judgment  to  arrange.  Miller 
himself  has  edited  his  poems  with  barbarous  savageness.  He  has 
not  hesitated  to  lop  off  entire  cantos,  to  butcher  out  the  whole 
trunk  of  a  poem,  leaving  only  straggling  and  unrelated  branches, 
to  add  to  work  in  his  early  manner  stanzas  after  his  later  ideals, 
and  to  revamp  and  destroy  and  cast  utterly  away  after  a  fashion 
that  has  few  precedents.  He  has  done  the  work  with  a  broad-ax 
when  a  lancet  was  needed.  His  editings  are  valuable,  indeed, 
only  in  the  new  prose  matter  that  he  has  added  as  foot-note  and 
introduction. 

The  key  to  Miller's  poetry  is  an  aphorism  from  his  own  pen: 
"We  must,  in  some  sort,  live  what  we  write  if  what  we  write  is 
to  live."  The  parts  of  his  work  that  undoubtedly  will  live  are 
those  poems  that  deal  most  closely  with  the  material  from  which 
he  sprang  and  of  which  his  early  life  was  molded.  He  is  the 
poet  of  the  frontier  and  of  the  great  mid-century  exodus  across 
the  Plains.  Poems  like  "The  Heroes  of  Oregon,"  and  "Exodus 
for  Oregon,"  are  a  part  of  the  national  history.  They  thrill  at 
every  point  with  reality  and  life. 

The  Plains!  the  shouting  drivers  at  the  wheel; 

The  crash  of  leather  whips;  the  crush  and  roll 

Of  wheels;  the  groan  of  yokes  and  grinding  steel 

And  iron  chain,  and  lo!  at  last  the  whole 

Vast  line,  that  reach'd  as  if  to  touch  the  goal, 

Began  to  stretch  and  stream  away  and  wind 

Toward  the  west,  as  if  with  one  control; 

Then  hope  loom'd  fair,  and  home  lay  far  behind; 

Before,  the  boundless  plain,  and  fiercest  of  their  kind. 

And  again 


108  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Then  dust  arose,  a  long  dim  line  like  smoke 

From  out  of  riven  earth.     The  wheels  went  groaning  by, 

Ten  thousand  feet  in  harness  and  in  yoke, 

They  tore  the  ways  of  ashen  alkali. 

And  desert  winds  blew  sudden,  swift  and  dry. 

The  dust!  it  sat  upon  and  fill'd  the  train! 

It  seemed  to  fret  and  fill  the  very  sky. 

Lo!  dust  upon  the  beasts,  the  tent,  the  plain, 

And  dust,  alas!  on  breasts  that  rose  not  up  again. 

Pictures  of  the  Plains,  the  Indian  camp,  the  mine,  the  mountain, 
the  herd,  the  trail,  are  to  be  found  scattered  everywhere  in  his 
work.  One  finds  them  in  the  most  unlikely  places — diamonds 
embedded  often  in  whole  acres  of  clay.  In  so  unpromising  a 
book  as  As  It  Was  in  the  Beginning  with  its  grotesque  introduc 
tion  explaining  in  characteristic  mixed  metaphor  that  "When, 
like  a  sentinel  on  his  watch  tower,  the  President,  with  his  divine 
audacity  and  San  Juan  valor,  voiced  the  real  heart  of  the  Amer 
icans  against  'race  suicide/  I  hastened  to  do  my  part,  in  my 
own  way,  ill  or  well,  in  holding  up  his  hands  on  the  firing  line" 
— even  in  this  book  one  finds  sudden  flashes  of  truest  poetry. 
He  is  describing  winter  on  the  Yukon.  About  him  are  an 
eager  band  of  gold-seekers  ready  to  press  north: 

The  siege  of  Troy  knew  scarce  such  men; 
The  cowards  had  not  voyaged  then, 
The  weak  had  died  upon  the  way. 

He  describes  with  realism  the  horrors  and  the  beauties  of  the 
Arctic  night,  then  at  last  the  rising  of  the  sun  after  the  long 
darkness : 

Then  glad  earth  shook  her  raiment  wide, 
As  some  proud  woman  satisfied, 
Tiptoed  exultant,  till  her  form, 
A  queen  above  some  battle  storm, 
Blazed  with  the  glory,  the  delight 
Of  battle  with  the  hosts  of  night. 
And  night  was  broken,  light  at  last 
Lay  on  the  Yukon.     Night  had  past. 

In  passages  like  these  the  imagination  of  the  poet  breaks  out  for 
a  moment  like  the  moon  from  dark  clouds,  but  all  too  often 
it  is  only  for  a  moment. 

He  is  the  poet  preeminently  of  the  mountains  of  the  North 
west.  The  spell  of  them  was  on  him  as  it  was  on  John  Muir. 
At  times  in  their  presence  he  bursts  into  the  very  ecstasy  of 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  109 

poetry;  sonorous  rhapsodies  and  invocations  in  which  he  reaches 
his  greatest  heights: 

Sierras,  and  eternal  tents 
Of   snow    that    flash    o'er   battlements 
Of  mountains!     My  land  of  the  sun, 
Am  I  not  true?  have  I  not  done 
All  things  for  thine,  for  thee  alone, 
0  sun-land,  sea-land  thou  mine  own? 

There  is  a  sweep  and  vastness  about  him  at  his  best  that  one 
finds  in  no  other  American  poet.  No  cameo  cutting  for  him,  no 
little  panels,  no  parlor  decorations  and  friezes.  His  canvas  is 
all  out  of  doors  and  as  broad  as  the  continent  itself : 

Oh,  heart  of  the  world's  heart!   West!   my  West! 
Look  up !  look  out !     There  are  fields  of  kine, 
There  are  clover-fields  that  are  red  as  wine; 
And  a  world  of  kine  in  the  fields  take  rest, 
And  ruminate  in  the  shade  of  the  trees 
That  are  white  with  blossoms  or  brown  with  bees. 
There  are  emerald  seas  of  corn  and  cane; 
There  are  cotton  fields  like  a  foamy  main, 
To  the  far-off  South  where  the  sun  was  born. 

The  wild  freedom  of  the  Western  air  beats  and  surges  in  his 
lines : 

Room!  room  to  turn  round  in,  to  breathe  and  be  free, 
To  grow  to  be  giant,  to  sail  as  at  sea 
With  the  speed  of  the  wind  on  a  steed  with  his  mane 
To  the  wind,  without  pathway  or  route  or  a  rein. 
Room!  room  to  be  free  where  the  white  border'd  sea 
Blows  a  kiss  to  a  brother  as  boundless  as  he; 
Where  the  buffalo  come  like  a  cloud  on  the  plain, 
Pouring  on  like  the  tide  of  a  storm-driven  main, 
And  the  lodge  of  the  hunter  to  friend  or  to  foe 
Offers  rest;  and  unquestion'd  you  come  or  you  go. 
My  plains  of  America!     Seas  of  wild  lands! 
From  a  land  in  the  seas  in  a  raiment  of  foam, 
That  has  reached  to  a  stranger  the  welcome  of  home, 
I  turn  to  you,  lean  to  you,  lift  you  my  hands. 

Or  again  this  magnificent  apostrophe  to  the  Missouri  River : 

Hoar  sire  of  hot,  sweet   Cuban  seas, 

Gray  father  of  the  continent, 
Fierce  fashioner  of  destinies, 

Of  states  thou  hast  upreared  or  rent, 


110  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Thou  know'st  no  limit;  seas  turn  back 

Bent,  broken  from  the  shaggy  shore; 
But  them,  in  thy  resistless  track, 

Art  lord  and  master  evermore. 
Missouri,  surge  and  sing  and  sweep! 
Missouri,  master  of  the  deep, 
From  snow-reared  Rockies  to  the  sea 
Sweep  on,  sweep  on  eternally! 

And  grandest  of  all,  the  poem  that  has  all  America  in  it  and  the 
American  soul,  perhaps  the  grandest  single  poem  of  the  period, 
"  Columbus  ": 

Behind  him  lay  the  gray  Azores, 

Behind  the  Gates  of  Hercules; 
Before  him  not  the  ghost  of  shores; 

Before  him  only  shoreless  seas. 
The  good  mate  said :    "Now  must  we  pray, 

For  lo !  the  very  stars  are  gone, 
Brave  AdmVl  speak ;  what  shall  I  say  ?" 
"Why,  say:  'Sail  on!  sail  on!  and  on!'" 

In  his  enthusiasm  for  the  mountains  and  the  American  land 
scape  Miller  was  thoroughly  sincere.  Despite  all  his  posturing 
and  his  fantastic  costumes  he  was  a  truly  great  soul,  and  he  spoke 
from  his  heart  when  he  said  in  1909:  "But  pity,  pity,  that 
men  should  so  foolishly  waste  time  with  either  me  or  mine  when 
I  have  led  them  to  the  mighty  heart  of  majestic  Shasta.  Why 
yonder,  lone  as  God  and  white  as  the  great  white  throne,  there 
looms  against  the  sapphire  upper  seas  a  mountain  peak  that 
props  the  very  porch  of  heaven;  and  yet  they  bother  with  and 
want  to  torment  a  poor  mote  of  dust  that  sinks  in  the  grasses  at 
their  feet."5 

IV 

This  leads  us  to  the  second  phase  of  Miller's  personality:  he 
was  a  philosopher,  a  ponderer  upon  the  deeper  things  of  the  spirit. 
He  had  inherited  with  his  Scotch  blood  a  religious  strain,  and  a 
large  section  of  his  poetry  deals  with  regions  far  indeed  from 
his  Sierras.  He  has  written  much  upon  the  common  funda 
mentals  of  humanity:  religion,  love,  honor,  courage,  truth,  and 
the  like.  In  his  "Vale!  America,"  written  in  Italy  during  his 
second  European  sojourn,  he  could  say, 

&  Bear  edition,  ii:  91. 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  111 

I  have  lived  from  within  and  not  from  without, 
And  again 

Could  I  but  return  to  my  woods  once  more, 

And  dwell  in  their  depths  as  I  have  dwelt, 

Kneel  in  their  mosses  as  I  have  knelt, 

Sit  where  the  cool  white  rivers  run, 

Away  from  the  world  and  half  hid  from  the  sun, 

Hear  winds  in  the  wood  of  my  storm-torn  shore, 

To  tread  where  only  the  red  man  trod, 

To  say  no  word,  but  listen  to  God! 

Glad  to  the  heart  with  listening — 

It  seems  to  me  that  I  then  could  sing, 

And  sing  as  never  sung  man  before. 

There  was  within  him  indeed  something  of  the  recluse  and  the 
hermit.  No  one  of  the  period,  not  even  Muir  or  Burroughs,  ap 
proached  Nature  with  more  of  worship.  He  would  live  with  her 
and  make  her  central  in  every  point  of  his  life.  In  his  later 
years  he  built  him  a  cabin  on  the  heights  above  San  Francisco 
Bay  with  a  tremendous  outlook  of  sea  and  mountain  and  sky,  and 
lived  there  the  rest  of  his  life. 

I  know  a  grassy  slope  above  the  sea, 

The  utmost  limit  of  the  westmost  land. 

In  savage,  gnarl'd,  and  antique  majesty 

The  great  trees  belt  about  the  place,  and  stand 

In  guard,  with  mailed  limb  and  lifted  hand, 

Against  the  cold  approaching  civic  pride. 

The  foamy  brooklets  seaward  leap;  the  bland 

Still  air  is  fresh  with  touch  of  wood  and  tide, 

And  peace,  eternal  peace,  possesses,  wild  and  wide. 

He  became  more  and  more  solitary,  more  and  more  of  a  mys 
tic  as  the  years  went  on.  Even  from  the  first,  as  Rossetti  pointed 
out,  there  is  an  almost  oriental  pantheism  in  him.  It  came  per 
haps  from  his  Indian  training.  "Some  curious  specimens," 
Rossetti  observed,  "might  be  culled  of  the  fervid  interfusion  of 
external  nature  and  the  human  soul  in  his  descriptive  passages. 
The  great  factors  of  the  natural  world — the  sea,  the  mountains, 
the  sun,  moon,  and  stars — become  personalities,  animated  with 
an  intense  life  and  dominant  possession." 

But  Miller  was  by  no  means  a  satyr,  as  many  have  pictured 
him,  delighting  in  wildness  for  the  mere  sake  of  wildness.  He 
overflowed  with  humanity.  No  man  was  ever  more  sensitive  or 


112  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

more  genuinely  sympathetic.  In  his  later  years  he  sat  above 
the  tumult  a  prophet  and  seer,  and  commented  and  advised 
and  warned.  Great  areas  of  his  poetry  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  West,  nothing  at  all  with  the  manner  and  the  material  that 
are  so  naturally  associated  with  his  name.  For  decades  his  voice 
was  heard  wherever  there  was  oppression  or  national  wrong. 
He  wrote  sonorous  lyrics  for  the  Indians,  the  Boers,  the  Russian 
Jews;  he  wrote  the  ringing  "Cuba  Libre"  which  was  read  by 
the  Baroness  de  Bazus  in  the  leading  American  cities  before  the 
Spanish  war;  he  championed  the  cause  of  woman;  and  every 
where  he  took  the  side  of  the  weaker  against  the  strong.  In  this 
he  resembles  Mark  Twain,,  that  other  prophet  of  the  era.  The 
freedom  of  the  new  West  was  in  both  of  them,  the  true  American 
4  *  hatred  of  tyranny  intense. ' '  He  was  won  always  by  gentleness 
and  beauty :  he  wrote  a  Life  of  Christ,  he  wrote  The  City  Beauti 
ful,  and  Songs  of  the  Soul. 

But  almost  all  that  he  wrote  in  this  pet  field  of  his  endeavor 
perished  with  its  day.  Of  it  all  there  is  no  single  poem  that 
may  be  called  distinctive.  He  moralizes,  he  preaches,  he  cham 
pions  the  weak,  but  he  says  nothing  new,  nothing  compelling. 
He  is  not  a  singer  of  the  soul:  he  is  the  maker  of  resounding 
addresses  to  the  peaks  and  the  plains  and  the  sea;  the  poet  of 
the  westward  march  of  a  people;  the  poet  of  elemental  men  in 
elemental  surroundings — pioneers  amid  the  vastness  of  the  utter 
most  West. 


It  is  easy  to  find  defects  in  Miller's  work.     Even  the  sophomore 
can  point  out  his  indebtedness  to  Byron  and  to  Swinburne — 

The  wine-dark  wave  with  its  foam  of  wool — 

his  Byronic  heroes  and  overdrawn  heroines ;  his  diction  excessive 
in  alliteration  and  adjectives;  his  barbarous  profusion  of  color; 
his  overworking  of  the  word  "tawney";  his  inability  to  tell  a 
story ;  his  wordiness  and  ramblings ;  his  lack  of  distinctness  and 
dramatic  power.  One  sweeps  away  the  whole  of  this,  however, 
when  one  admits  that  three  quarters  of  all  that  Miller  wrote 
should  be  thrown  away  before  criticism  begins. 

The  very  faults  of  the  poet  serve  as  arguments  that  he  was 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  113 

a  poet — a  poet  born,  not  a  poet  made  from  study  of  other  poets. 
He  was  not  classic:  he  was  romantic — a  poet  who  surrendered 
himself  to  the  music  within  him  and  did  not  care.  "To  me/' 
he  declared  in  his  defense  of  poesy,  "the  savage  of  the  plains 
or  the  negro  of  the  South  is  a  truer  poet  than  the  scholar  of 
Oxford.  They  may  have  been  alike  born  with  a  love  of  the 
beautiful,  but  the  scholar,  shut  up  within  the  gloomy  walls, 
with  his  eyes  to  a  dusty  book,  has  forgotten  the  face  of  Nature 
and  learned  only  the  art  of  utterance. ' ' 6  This  is  one  of  the 
keys  to  the  new  era  that  opened  in  the  seventies.  It  explains 
the  new  laughter  of  the  West,  it  explains  the  Pike  balladry, 
it  explains  the  new  burst  of  democratic  fiction,  the  studies  of 
lowly  life  in  obscure  environments.  "To  these  poets/'  he  con 
tinues  ;  i '  these  lovers  of  the  beautiful ;  these  silent  thinkers ;  these 
mighty  mountaineers,  far  away  from  the  rush  and  roar  of  com 
merce;  these  men  who  have  room  and  strength  and  the  divine 
audacity  to  think  and  act  for  themselves — to  these  men  who  dare 
to  have  heart  and  enthusiasm,  who  love  the  beautiful  world  that 
the  Creator  made  for  them,  I  look  for  the  leaven  of  our  loaf." 

Miller  comes  nearer  to  Mark  Twain  than  to  any  other  writer, 
unless  it  be  John  Muir.  True,  he  is  wholly  without  humor,  true 
he  had  never  been  a  boy,  and  in  his  mother's  words  had  "never 
played,  never  had  playthings,  never  wanted  them ' ' ;  yet  notwith 
standing  this  the  two  men  are  to  be  classed  together.  Both  are 
the  recorders  of  a  vanished  era  of  which  they  were  a  part;  both 
emerged  from  the  material  which  they  used;  both  wrote  notable 
prose — Miller's  Life  Among  the  Modocs  and  his  other  auto 
biographic  picturings  rank  with  Life  on  the  Mississippi;  both 
worked  with  certainty  in  one  of  the  great  romantic  areas  of 
human  history.  There  is  in  the  poems  of  Miller,  despite  all  their 
crudity,  a  sense  of  adventure,  of  glorious  richness,  of  activity  in 
the  open  air,  that  is  all  his  own.  His  Byronism  and  his  Swin- 
burneism  were  but  externals,  details  of  manner:  the  song  and 
the  atmosphere  about  it  were  his  own,  spun  out  of  his  own  ob 
servation  and  colored  by  his  own  unique  personality. 

His  own  definition  of  poetry  determines  his  place  among  the 
poets  and  explains  his  message :  "  To  me  a  poem  must  be  a  pic 
ture,"  and  it  must,  he  further  declared,  be  drawn  always  from 
Nature  by  one  who  has  seen  and  who  knows.  ' '  The  art  of  poetry 

«  The  Independent,  June,  1879. 


\ 


114  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

is  found  in  books;  the  inspiration  of  poetry  is  found  only  in 
Nature.  This  book,  the  book  of  Nature,  I  studied  in  the  wilder 
ness  like  a  monk  for  many  years. "  The  test  of  poetry,  he  main 
tained,  is  the  persistence  with  which  it  clings  in  the  memory, 
not  the  words  but  the  picture.  Judged  by  this  standard,  Songs 
of  (he  Sierras,  which  is  a  succession  of  gorgeous  pictures  that 
cling  in  the  imagination,  must  rank  high. 

It  was  his  ideal  to  draw  his  generation  away  from  their  pursuit 
of  gold  and  their  slavery  in  the  artificial  round  of  the  cities,  their 
worship  of  European  culture,  European  architecture,  European 
books,  and  show  them  the  beauties  of  their  own  land,  the  glories 
of  the  life  out  of  doors,  the  heroism  and  sacrifice  of  the  pioneers 
who  made  possible  the  later  period. 

"  Grateful  that  I  was  born  in  an  age  of  active  and  mighty 
enterprise,  and  exulting,  even  as  a  lad,  in  the  primitive  glory 
of  nature,  wild  woods,  wild  birds,  wild  beasts,  I  began,  as  my 
parents  pushed  west  through  the  wilderness,  to  make  beauty 
and  grandeur  the  god  of  my  idolatry,  even  before  I  yet  knew  the 
use  of  words.  To  give  expression  to  this  love  and  adoration,  to 
lead  others  to  see  grandeur,  good,  glory  in  all  things  animate  or 
inanimate,  rational  or  irrational,  was  my  early  and  has  ever  been 
my  one  aspiration. " 

He  would  be  the  prophet  of  a  new  era.  To  the  bards  who 
are  to  come  he  flings  out  the  challenge:  "The  Old  World  has 
been  written,  written  fully  and  bravely  and  well.  ...  Go  forth 
in  the  sun,  away  into  the  wilds,  or  contentedly  lay  aside  your 
aspirations  of  song.  Now,  mark  you  distinctly,  I  am  not  writing 
for  nor  of  the  poets  of  the  Old  World  or  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 
They  have  their  work  and  their  way  of  work.  My  notes  are  for 
the  songless  Alaskas,  Canadas,  Californias,  the  Aztec  lands  and 
the  Argentines  that  patiently  await  their  coming  prophets."  7 

VI 

The  treatment  of  Miller  by  his  own  countrymen  has  never 
been  so  laudatory  as  that  accorded  him  by  other  lands,  notably 
England,  but  his  complaint  that  his  own  people  neglected  him 
is  groundless.  All  the  leading  magazines — the  Atlantic,  Scrib- 
ner's,  the  Independent,  and  the  rest — opened  their  columns  to 

TBear  Edition,  iii:  33. 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  115 

him  freely.  That  reviews  of  his  work  and  critical  estimates  of 
him  generally  were  more  caustic  on  this  side  the  Atlantic  came 
undoubtedly  from  the  fact  that  the  critic  who  was  to  review  him 
approached  his  book  always  in  a  spirit  of  irritation  at  the  British 
insistence  that  an  American  book  to  be  worth  the  reading  must 
be  redolent  of  the  wild  and  the  uncouth,  must  deal  with  Indians, 
and  buffaloes,  and  the  various  extremes  of  democracy.  Miller  has 
been  the  chief  victim  of  this  controversy — a  controversy,  indeed, 
which  was  waged  through  the  whole  period.  The  eccentricities  of 
the  man  and  his  ignorance  and  his  picturesque  crudeness,  set  over 
against  the  extravagant  claims  of  British  writers,  aroused  pre 
judices  that  blinded  the  American  critic  to  the  poet's  real  worth. 
On  the  whole  the  English  have  been  right.  Not  that  American 
literature  to  be  of  value  must  be  shaggy  and  ignorant,  a  thing 
only  of  Pikes  and  slang  and  dialect.  It  means  rather  that  the 
new  period  which  opened  in  the  seventies  demanded  genuine 
ness,  reality,  things  as  they  are,  studies  from  life  rather  than 
studies  from  books;  that  it  demanded  not  the  reechoing  of  out 
worn  ideals  and  measures  from  other  lands,  but  the  spirit  of 
America,  of  the  new  Western  world,  of  the  new  soul  of  the  new 
republic.  And  what  poet  has  caught  more  of  this  fresh  new 
America  than  the  singer  of  the  Sierras,  the  singer  of  the  great 
American  deserts,  and  the  northern  Yukon? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

JOAQUIN  MILLER.  (1841-1913.)  Specimens,  1868;  Joaquin  et  al,  1869; 
Pacific  Poems,  1870;  Songs  of  the  Sierras,  1871;  Songs  of  the  Sunlands, 
1873;  Unwritten  History:  Life  Amongst  the  Modocs  (with  Percival  Mul- 
ford),  1874;  The  Ship  in  the  Desert,  1875;  First  Families  of  the  Sierras, 
1875;  Songs  of  the  Desert,  1875;  The  One  Fair  Woman,  1876;  The  Baroness 
of  New  York,  1877;  Songs  of  Italy,  1878;  The  Danites  in  the  Sierras, 
1881;  Shadows  of  Shasta,  1881;  Poems,  Complete  Edition,  1882;  Forty- 
nine:  a  California  Drama,  1882;  '49."  or,  the  Gold-seekers  of  the  Sierras, 
1884;  Mcmorie  and  Rime,  1884;  The  Destruction  of  Gotham,  1886;  Songs 
of  the  Mexican  Seas,  1887;  In  Classic  Shades  and  Other  Poems,  1890; 
The  Building  of  the  City  Beautiful,  a  Poetic  Romance,  1893;  Songs  of  the 
Soul,  1896;  Chants  for  the  Boer,  1900;  True  Bear  Stories,  1900;  As  It 
Was  in  the  Beginning,  1903;  Light:  a  Narrative  Poem,  1907;  Joaquin 
Miller's  Poetry,  Bear  Edition,  1909. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   TRANSITION   POETS 

The  second  generation  of  poets  in  America,  those  later  singers 
born  during  the  vital  thirties  in  which  had  appeared  the  earliest 
books  of  the  older  school,  began  its  work  during  the  decade  be 
fore  the  Civil  War.  It  was  not  a  group  that  had  been  launched, 
as  were  the  earlier  poets  of  the  century,  by  a  spiritual  and  moral 
cataclysm,  or  by  a  new  strong  tide  in  the  national  life.  It  was 
a  school  of  deliberate  art,  the  inevitable  classical  school  which 
follows  ever  upon  the  heels  of  the  creative  epoch. 

It  came  as  a  natural  product  of  mid-century  conditions. 
America,  hungry  for  culture,  had  fed  upon  the  romantic  pabulum 
furnished  so  abundantly  in  the  thirties  and  the  forties.  It  looked 
away  from  the  garish  daylight  of  the  new  land  of  its  birth  into 
the  delicious  twilight  of  the  lands  across  the  sea,  with  their  ruins 
ju id  their  legends  and  their  old  romance. 

We  have  seen  how  it  was  an  age  of  sugared  epithet,  of  ado 
lescent  sadness  and  longing,  of  sentiment  even  to  sentimentality. 
Its  dreams  were  centered  in  the  East,  in  that  old  world  over 
which  there  hung  the  glamour  of  romance.  "I  hungrily  read," 
writes  Bayard  Taylor  of  this  epoch  in  his  life,  "all  European 
books  of  travel,  and  my  imagination  clothed  foreign  countries 
with  a  splendid  atmosphere  of  poetry  and  art.  .  .  .  Italy!  and 
Greece!  the  wild  enthusiasm  with  which  I  should  tread  those 
lands,  and  view  the  shrines  'where  young  Romance  and  Love 
like  sister  pilgrims  turn';  the  glorious  emotions  of  my  soul,  and 
the  inspiration  I  should  draw  from  them,  which  I  now  partly  feel. 
How  my  heart  leaps  at  the  sound  of : 

Woods  that  wave  on  Delphi's  steep, 
Isles  that  gem  the  JEgean  deep. 

The  isles  of  Greece !  hallowed  by  Homer  and  Milton  and  Byron ! 
My  words  are  cold  and  tame  compared  with  my  burning 
thoughts."1 

i  Life  and  Letters  of  Bayard  Taylor,  i:  36- 

110 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  117 

The  increasing  tide  of  translations  that  marked  the  thirties 
and  the  forties,  the  new  editions  of  English  and  continental 
poets — Shelley,  Keats,  Heine ;  the  early  books  of  the  Victorians — 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,  the  young  Tennyson — came  across 
the  sea  to  these  sensitive  souls  like  visitants  from  another  planet. 
"I  had  the  misfortune/'  Taylor  writes  in  1848,  "to  be  intoxi 
cated  yesterday — with  Tennyson 's  new  poem, '  The  Princess. '  .  .  . 
For  the  future,  for  a  long  time  at  least,  I  dare  not  read  Tenny 
son.  His  poetry  would  be  the  death  of  mine.  His  intense  per 
ception  of  beauty  haunts  me  for  days,  and  I  cannot  drive  it 
from  me. ' ' 2 

Poetry  was  a  thing  to  be  spoken  of  with  awed  lips  like  love 
or  the  deeper  longings  of  the  soul.  It  was  an  ethereal  thing 
apart  from  the  prose  of  life;  it  was  beauty,  melody,  divinest  art 
— a  thing  broken  into  harshly  by  the  daily  round,  a  thing  to  be 
stolen  away  to  in  golden  hours,  as  Stoddard  and  Taylor  stole 
away  on  Saturday  nights  to  read  their  poets  and  their  own 
poems,  and  to  lose  themselves  in  a  more  glorious  world.  "My 
favorite  poet  was  Keats,  and  his  was  Shelley,  and  we  pretended 
to  believe  that  the  souls  of  these  poets  had  returned  to  earth  in 
our  bodies.  My  worship  of  my  master  was  restricted  to  a  silent 
imitation  of  his  diction;  my  comrade's  worship  of  his  master 
took  the  form  of  an  ode  to  Shelley.  ...  It  is  followed  in  the 
volume  before  me  by  an  airy  lyric  on  i  Sicilian  Wine, '  which  was 
written  out  of  his  head,  as  the  children  say,  for  he  had  no  Sicilian 
wine,  nor,  indeed,  wine  of  any  other  vintage. ' ' 3 

It  explains  the  weakness  of  the  whole  school.  All  too  often 
did  these  young  poets  of  the  second  generation  write  from  out 
their  heads  rather  than  their  hearts.  They  were  practitioners  of 
the  poetic  art  rather  than  eager  workers  in  the  stuff  that  is 
human  life.  They  were  inspired  not  by  their  times  and  the  ac 
tual  life  that  touched  elbows  with  theirs  in  their  toil  from  day 
to  day;  they  were  inspired  by  other  singers.  Poetry  they  wove 
from  poetry ;  words  from  words.  Song  begotten  from  other  song 
perishes  with  its  singer.  To  endure,  poetry  must  come  from 
"that  inexpressible  aching  feeling  of  the  heart" — from  the  im 
pact  of  life  upon  life;  it  must  thrill  with  the  deepest  emotions 
of  its  creator's  soul  as  he  looks  beyond  his  books  and  all  the 

2  Life  and  Letters  of  Bayard  Taylor,  1:119. 

s  R.  H.  Stoddard  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  February,  1879. 


118  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

printed  words  of  others  into  the  yearning,  struggling  world  of 
men. 

I 

The  members  of  this  second  generation  of  poets  fall  into  two 
distinct  groups:  first,  those  who  caught  not  at  all  the  new  note 
that  came  into  American  life  and  American  literature  after  the 
war,  and  so,  like  the  survivors  of  the  earlier  school,  went  on  to 
the  end  only  echoing  and  reechoing  the  earlier  music ;  and,  sec 
ondly,  those  transitional  poets  who  yielded  to  the  change  of  times 
and  retuned  their  instruments  to  the  new  key.  Of  the  first 
group  four  only  may  be  mentioned:  Thomas  Buchanan  Read 
(1822-1872),  George  Henry  Boker  (1823-1890),  Bayard  Taylor 
(1825-1878),  and  Richard  Henry  Stoddard  (1825-1903).  None 
of  these  may  be  called  a  poet  of  the  transition ;  none  of  these,  not 
even  Taylor,  caught  the  new  spirit  of  recreated  America;  none 
of  them  added  to  poetry  any  notes  that  have  influenced  the  song 
or  the  life  or  the  spirit  of  later  years.  They  were  poets  of 
beauty  without  a  message,  and  they  caught  no  new  vision  of 
beauty. 

The  work  of  the  group  began  early,  only  a  few  years  later  than 
that  of  the  major  singers.  Taylor's  Ximena  appeared  in  1844; 
Boker 's  Lesson  of  Life  and  Read's  Poems  in  1847;  and  Stod 
dard  's  Footprints  in  1849.  By  1870  they  had  settled  into  their 
final  manner.  It  was  theirs  to  strike  the  last  notes,  ineffective 
and  all  too  often  decadent,  of  that  mid-century  music  that  had 
begun  with  Bryant  and  Poe,  with  Emerson  and  Whittier,  with 
Willis  and  Longfellow. 

II 

We  may  pause  a  moment  with  Taylor.  His  personality  in  the 
early  seventies  undoubtedly  was  more  potent  in  America  than 
that  of  any  other  poet.  His  was  the  leading  poetic  voice  of  the 
Centennial  of  1876,  that  great  national  gathering  that  marks  in 
a  way  the  birth  of  the  new  American  spirit. 

But  Taylor  was  not  at  all  an  original  force.  His  power  lay 
in  his  picturesque  personality.  His  Macaulay-like  memory 
charged  with  enormous  store  of  literature  from  all  lands  and  at 
instant  command;  his  bluff  and  hearty  manner;  and  the  atmos 
phere  of  romance  which  surrounded  him,  made  him  a  marked  man 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  119 

wherever  lie  went.  He  appealed  to  the  imagination  of  adolescent 
America.  Like  Byron,  he  had  traveled  far  in  the  mysterious 
East;  there  was  the  sensuousness  and  dreaminess  of  the  Orient 
about  him;  he  had  "ripened,"  as  he  expressed  it,  "in  the  suns 
of  many  lands." 

The  weakness  of  Taylor  was  the  weakness  of  Stoddard,  of 
Aldrich,  of  the  early  Stedman,  of  all  the  poets  of  beauty.  They 
had  drunk  like  the  young  Tennyson  of  the  fatal  draft  of  Keats. 
To  them  beauty  concerned  itself  with  the  mere  externals  of  sense. 
Keats  is  the  poet  of  rich  interiors,  of  costly  hangings,  and  em 
broidered  garments.  To  read  him  is  to  come  into  the  presence 
of  rare  wines,  of  opiates  that  lap  one  in  long  forgetfulness,  of 
softly  whispering  flutes  and  viols,  of  rare  tables  heaped  with 
luscious  dainties  brought  from  far,  of  all  the  golden  East  can 
bring  of  luxury  of  furnishings  and  beauty  of  form  and  color. 
"A  thing  of  beauty,"  he  sings,  "is  a  joy  forever,"  but  beauty  to 
Keats  is  only  that  which  brings  delight  to  the  senses.  Of  beauty 
of  the  soul  he  knows  nothing.  His  women  are  Greek  goddesses : 
nothing  more.  In  Keats,  and  later  in  his  disciples,  Taylor  and 
Stoddard  and  Aldrich,  we  never  come  face  to  face  with  souls  in 
conflict  for  eternal  principles.  Shelley  looked  at  life  about  him 
and  reacted  upon  it.  He  showed  us  Prometheus  bound  to  the 
rock  for  refusal  to  yield  to  tyrannic  law,  and  then  liberated  by 
the  new  soul  of  human  love.  He  believed  that  he  had  a  vision 
of  a  new  heaven  and  earth  with  Reason  as  its  god  and  Love  its 
supreme  soul,  and  he  beat  out  his  life  in  eagerness  to  bring  men 
into  this  new  heaven  in  the  clouds.  Keats  reacted  upon  nothing 
save  the  material  which  he  found  in  books :  translations  from  the 
Greek,  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  that  earlier  adolescent  dreamer 
Marlowe,  Milton,  Coleridge.  With  the  exception  of  hints  from 
"Christabel"  which  we  find  worked  into  "The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes" 
and  "Lamia,"  Keats  never  got  nearer  his  own  century  than 
Milton's  day.  He  turned  in  disgust  from  the  England  about 
him — that  England  with  its  Benthamite  individualism,  inherit 
ance  from  the  French  Revolution,  which  even  then  was  culmi 
nating  in  all  the  misery  and  riot  and  civil  strife  that  later  we  find 
pictured  in  the  novels  of  Dickens  and  Kingsley — he  turned  from 
it  to  the  world  of  merely  sensuous  delight,  where  selfishly  he  might 
swoon  away  in  a  dream  of  beauty. 

Taylor  and  Stoddard  and  the  early  Aldrich  reacted  not  at  all 


120  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

on  the  America  that  so  sadly  needed  them.  They  added  senti 
ment  to  the  music  of  Keats  and  dreamed  of  the  Orient  with  its 
life  of  sensuous  surfeit : 

The  Poet  came  to  the  land  of  the  East 

When  spring  was  in  the  air: 
The  Earth  was  dressed  for  a  wedding  feast, 

So  young  she  seemed  and  fair; 
And  the  Poet  knew  the  land  of  the  East — 

His  soul  was  native  there. 

And  further  sang  the  Nightingale: 

Tour  bower  not  distant  lies. 
I  hear  the  sound  of  a  Persian  lute 

From  the  jasmined  window  rise, 
And,  twin-bright  stars,  through  the  lattice  bars, 

I  saw  the  Sultana's  eyes. 

The  Poet  said:  I  will  here  abide, 

In  the  Sun's  unclouded  door; 
Here  are  the  wells  of  all  delight 

On  the  lost  Arcadian  shore: 
Here  is  the  light  on  sea  and  land, 

And  the  dream  deceives  no  more. 

" Taylor,  Boker,  Stoddard,  Read,  Story,  and  their  allies/'  con 
fessed  Stedman  in  his  later  years,  "  wrote  poetry  for  the  sheer 
love  of  it.  They  did  much  beautiful  work,  with  a  cosmopolitan 
and  artistic  bent,  making  it  a  part  of  the  varied  industry  of  men 
of  letters;  in  fact,  they  were  creating  a  civic  Arcadia  of  their 
own."4 

But  in  making  this  civic  Arcadia  of  their  own  they  deliberately 
neglected  the  opportunity  of  reacting  upon  the  actual  civic  life 
of  their  own  land  in  their  own  and  later  times.  They  lived  in 
one  of  the  great  germinal  periods  in  the  history  of  the  race  and 
they  deliberately  chose  to  create  a  little  Arcadia  of  their  own. 

No  man  of  the  century,  save  Lowell,  was  given  the  opportunity 
to  react  upon  the  new  world  of  America  at  a  critical  moment 
such  as  was  given  to  Taylor  at  the  Centennial  in  1876.  Subject 
and  occasion  there  were  worthy  of  a  Milton.  A  new  America  had 
arisen  from  the  ashes  of  the  war,  eager  and  impetuous.  A  new 
era  had  begun  whose  glories  we  of  a  later  century  are  just  be 
ginning  to  realize.  Who  was  to  voice  that  era  ?  The  land  needed 

*  An  American  Anthology.     Introduction,  xxvi. 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  121 

a  poet,  a  seer,  a  prophet,  and  in  Taylor  it  had  only  a  dreamer  of 
beauty,  gorgeous  of  epithet,  musical,  sensuous.  "The  National 
Ode,"  when  we  think  of  what  the  occasion  demanded,  must  be 
classed  as  one  of  the  greatest  failures  in  the  history  of  American 
literature.  Freneau's  "The  Rising  Glory  of  America,"  written 
in  1772,  is  an  incomparably  better  ode.  There  are  no  lines  in 
Taylor's  poem  to  grip  the  heart  and  send  the  blood  into  quicker 
beat ;  there  are  no  magnificent  climaxes  as  in  Lowell 's  odes : 

Virginia  gave  us  this  imperial  man. 

Mother  of  States  and  undiminished  men, 
Thou  gavest  us  a  country  giving  him. 

New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American. 

There  is  excessive  tinkling  of  rimes;  there  is  forcing  of  meas 
ures  that  could  have  come  only  of  haste ;  there  is  lack  of  incisive- 
ness  and  of  distinctive  poetic  phrases  that  cling  in  the  memory 
and  become  current  coin ;  there  is  lack  of  vision  and  of  message. 
The  poet  of  beauty  was  unequal  to  his  task.  There  was  needed 
a  prophet  and  a  creative  soul,  and  the  lack  of  such  a  leader  at 
the  critical  moment  accounts  in  part  perhaps  for  the  poetic  lean 
ness  of  the  period  that  was  to  come. 


Ill 

The  poets  of  the  second  group,  the  transition  poets,  for  the  most 
part  were  born  during  the  thirties.  Like  Taylor  and  Stoddard, 
they  were  poets  of  beauty  who  read  other  poets  with  eagerness 
and  wrote  with  deliberation.  Their  early  volumes  are  full  of  ex 
quisitely  finished  work  modeled  upon  Theocritus  and  Heine,  upon 
Keats  and  Shelley.  They  reacted  but  little  upon  the  life  about 
them ;  they  railed  upon  America  as  crude  and  raw,  a  land  without 
adequate  art,  and  were  content  to  fly  away  into  the  world  of 
beauty  and  forget. 

Then  suddenly  the  war  crashed  in  their  ears.  For  the  first 
time  they  caught  a  vision  of  life,  of  their  country,  of  themselves, 
and  for  the  first  time  they  burst  into  real  song.  "For  eight 
years,"  wrote  the  young  Stedman  in  1861,  "I  have  cared  nothing 
for  politics — have  been  disgusted  with  American  life  and  doings. 
Now  for  the  first  time  I  am  proud  of  my  country  and  my  grand 


122  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

heroic  brethren.  The  greatness  of  the  crisis,  the  Homeric 
grandeur  of  the  contest,  surrounds  and  elevates  us  all.  .  .  . 
Henceforth  the  sentimental  and  poetic  will  fuse  with  the  intel 
lectual  to  dignify  and  elevate  the  race. ' ' B 

Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  was  of  old  New  England  stock. 
He  had  inherited  with  his  blood  what  Howells  termed,  in  words 
that  might  have  emanated  from  Dr.  Holmes  himself,  "the  quality 
<>f  I  Boston,  the  honor  and  passion  of  literature/'  He  was  born  in 
!  Hartford,  Connecticut,  October  8,  1833.  Bereft  of  his  father 
when  he  was  but  two  years  of  age,  and  later,  when  he  was  a  mere 
child,  forced  to  leave  his  mother  and  live  with  an  uncle  who  could 
little  supply  the  place  that  only  father  and  mother  can  fill  in  a 
boy's  life,  he  grew  into  a  headstrong,  moody  youth  who  resented 
control.  He  was  a  mere  lad  of  fifteen  when  he  entered  Yale,  the 
youngest  member  indeed  of  his  class,  and  his  rustication  two  years 
later  was  only  a  natural  result.  Boyishness  and  high  spirits  and 
impetuous  independence  of  soul  are  not  crimes,  however,  and  the 
college  in  later  years  was  glad  to  confer  upon  him  his  degree. 

Returning  to  Norwich,  the  home  of  his  uncle,  he  pursued  for 
a  time  the  study  of  law.  Later  he  connected  himself  with  the 
local  newspaper,  and  in  1853,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  he  was  mar 
ried.  Two  years  later,  he  left  newspaper  work  to  become  the 
New  York  representative  of  a  firm  which  was  to  engage  in  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  clocks.  Accordingly  in  the  summer  of 
1855  he  took  up  for  the  first  time  his  residence  in  the  city  that  was 
to  be  so  closely  connected  with  the  rest  of  his  life. 

The  clock  factory  made  haste  to  burn  and  Stedman  again  was 
out  of  employment,  this  time  in  the  great  wilderness  of  New  York. 
For  a  time  he  was  a  real  estate  and  commission  broker,  later  he 
was  a  clerk  in  a  railroad  office.  Still  later  he  attracted  wide 
attention  with  his  ephemeral  poem  "The  Diamond  Wedding," 
and  on  the  strength  of  this  work  became  a  correspondent  of  the 
I  Tribune.  In  1861  he  went  to  the  front  as  war  correspondent  of 
the  Washington  World,  and  his  letters  during  the  early  years  of 
the  struggle  were  surpassed  by  those  of  no  other  correspondent. 
In  1862  he  was  given  a  position  in  the  office  of  the  Attorney- 
General  and  a  year  later  he  began  his  career  as  a  broker  in  Wall 
Street,  a  career  that  was  to  hold  him  in  its  grip  for  the  rest  of 
his  life. 

»  Life  and  Letters  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  i :  242. 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  123 

Pan  and  Wall  Street  are  far  from  synonymous.  There  was 
poetry  in  Stedman  's  soul ;  there  were  within  him  creative  powers 
that  he  felt  were  able  to  place  him  among  the  masters  if  he  could 
but  command  time  to  study  his  art.  He  worshiped  beauty  and 
he  was  compelled  to  keep  his  eye  upon  the  stock-ticker.  He  read 
Keats  and  Tennyson,  Moschus  and  Theocritus,  but  it  was  always 
after  the  freshness  of  his  day  had  been  given  to  the  excitement 
of  the  market  place.  Time  and  again  he  sought  to  escape,  but 
the  pressure  of  city  life  was  upon  him.  He  had  a  growing  fam 
ily  now  and  there  were  no  resources  save  those  that  came  from  his 
office.  It  was  a  precarious  business  in  which  he  engaged ;  it  was 
founded  upon  uncertainty;  failure  might  come  at  any  moment 
through  no  fault  of  his  own.  Several  times  during  his  life  he 
was  on  the  brink  of  ruin.  Time  and  again  his  health  failed  him, 
but  he  still  struggled  on.  The  financial  chapter  of  his  biography 
is  one  of  the  most  pathetic  in  literary  annals.  But  through  toil 
and  discouragement,  amid  surroundings  fatal  to  poetic  vision,  he 
still  kept  true  to  his  early  literary  ideals,  and  his  output  when 
measured  either  in  volumes  or  in  literary  merit  is  remarkable. 

The  first  period  of  Stedman 's  poetic  life  produced  little  save 
colorless,  passionless  lyrics,  the  echoes  of  a  wide  reading  in  other 
poets.  He  went,  like  all  of  his  clan,  to  books  rather  than  life.  He 
was  early  enamoured  of  the  Sicilian  idylists.  It  was  a  dream  that 
never  quite  deserted  him,  to  make  ' '  a  complete,  metrical,  English 
version  of  the  idyls  of  Theocritus,  Moschus,  and  Bion" — an  idle 
dream  indeed  for  a  vigorous  young  poet  in  a  land  that  needed 
the  breath  of  a  new  life.  Why  dawdle  over  Theocritus  when 
fields  are  newly  green  and  youth  is  calling?  Stedman  himself 
seems  to  have  misgivings.  "When  the  job  [the  collecting  of  the 
various  texts]  was  nearly  ended,  I  reflected  that  one's  freshest 
years  should  be  given  to  original  work,  and  such  excursions  might 
well  be  deferred  to  the  pleasures  of  old  age.  My  time  seemed  to 
have  been  wasted. ' '  6 

During  this  earlier  period  poetry  was  to  him  an  artistic  thing 
to  be  judged  coldly  from  the  standpoint  of  art  and  beauty.  He 
worked  with  extreme  care  upon  his  lines.  For  a  time  he  con 
sidered  that  he  had  reached  his  highest  level  in  "Alcetryon,"  and 
he  waited  eagerly  for  the  world  to  discover  it.  William  Winter, 
his  fellow  poet  of  beauty,  hailed  it  as  "not  unworthy  of  the 

e  Life  and  Letters  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  i :  384. 


124  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

greatest  living  poet,  Tennyson";  Professor  Hadley  of  Yale  pro 
nounced  it  "one  of  the  most  successful  modern-antiques  that  I 
have  ever  seen."  Then  Lowell,  with  one  of  his  flashes  of  insight, 
told  the  whole  truth :  '  *  I  don 't  believe  in  these  modern  antiques 
— no,  not  in  Landor,  not  in  Swinburne,  not  in  any  of  'em.  They 
are  all  wrong.  It  is  like  writing  Latin  verses — the  material  you 
work  in  is  dead."  It  was  the  voice  of  an  oracle  to  the  young 
poet.  Twenty-three  years  later  he  wrote  of  his  chagrin  when 
Lowell  had  praised  his  volume  in  the  North  American  Review  and 
had  said  nothing  of  his  piece  de  resistance  "Alectryon." 
"  Finally  I  hinted  as  much  to  him.  He  at  once  said  that  it  was 
my  'best  piece  of  work/  but  no  'addition  to  poetic  literature/ 
since  we  already  have  enough  masterpieces  of  that  kind — from 
Lander's  Hamadryad  and  Tennyson's  (Enone  down  to  the  latest 
effort  by  Swinburne  or  Mr.  Fields.  .  .  .  Upon  reflection,  I 
thought  Lowell  right.  A  new  land  calls  for  new  song. ' ' 7 

The  episode  is  a  most  significant  one.  It  marks  the  passing  of 
a  whole  poetic  school. 

To  the  war  period  that  followed  this  era  in  the  poet's  life  be 
long  the  deepest  notes  of  Stedman's  song.  In  his  Alice  of  Mon- 
mouth,  he  is  no  longer  the  mere  poet  of  beauty,  he  is  the  inter 
preter  of  the  thrill,  the  sacrifice,  the  soul  of  the  great  war.  The 
poem  has  the  bite  of  life  in  it.  "The  Cavalry  Song"  thrills  with 
the  very  soul  of  battle : 

Dash  on  beneath  the  smoking  dome, 

Through  level  lightnings  gallop  nearer! 
One  look  to  Heaven !  no  thoughts  of  home : 
The  guidons  that  we  bear  are  dearer. 

CHARG-E  ! 

Cling!     Clang!  forward  all! 
Heaven  help  those  whose  horses  fall! 
Cut  left  and  right! 

The  poem  "Wanted — a  Man"  written  in  the  despondent  au 
tumn  of  1862,  came  not  from  books,  but  hot  from  a  man 's  heart : 

Give  us  a  man  of  God's  own  mold, 

Born  to  marshal  his  fellow  men; 
One  whose  fame  is  not  bought  or  sold 

At  the  stroke  of  a  politician's  pen; 

Give  us  the  man  of  thousands  ten, 

7  Life  and  Letters  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  i :  372. 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  125 

Fit  to  do  as  well  as  to  plan; 

Give  us  a  rallying-cry,  and  then, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  give  us  a  MAN  ! 

0,  we  will  follow  him  to  the  death, 

Where  the  foeman's  fiercest  columns  are! 
0,  we  will  use  our  latest  breath, 

Cheering   for  every  sacred   star! 

His  to  marshal  us  high  and  far; 
Ours  to  battle,  as  patriots  can 

When  a  Hero  leads  the  Holy  War!— 
Abraham  Lincoln,  give  us  a  MAN  ! 

Poems  like  this  will  not  die.  They  are  a  part  of  the  deeper 
history  of  America.  They  are  worth  more  than  ships  or  guns  or 
battlements.  Only  a  few  notes  like  this  did  Stedman  strike. 
Once  again  its  deep  note  rang  in  "The  Hand  of  Lincoln" : 

Lo,  as  I  gaze,  that  statured  man, 

Built  up  from  yon  large  hand,  appears: 

A  type  that  Nature  wills  to  plan 
But  once  in  all  a  people's  years. 

What  better  than  this  voiceless  cast 

To  tell  of  such  a  one  as  he, 
Since  through   its   living  semblance   passed 

The  thought  that  bade  a  race  be  free! 

Another  deep  note  he  struck  in  that  war  period  that  so  shook 
him,  a  note  called  forth  by  personal  bereavement  and  put  into 
immortal  form  in  ' '  The  Undiscovered  Country, ' '  a  song  that  was 
to  be  sung  at  the  funerals  of  his  wife  and  his  sons,  and  later  at 
his  own : 

Could  we  but  know 

The  land  that  ends  our  dark,  uncertain  travel, 
Where  lie  those  happier  hills  and  meadows  low — 

Ah,  if  beyond  the  spirit's  inmost  cavil, 
Aught  of  that  Country  could  we  surely  know, 
Who  would  not  go? 

Aside  from  a  handful  of  spontaneous  love  songs — "At  Twi 
light,"  "Autumn  Song,"  "Stanzas  for  Music,"  "Song  from  a 
Drama,"  "Creole  Love  Song" — nothing  else  of  Stedman 's  poetic 
work  greatly  matters.  He  is  a  lyrist  who  struck  a  few  true  notes, 
a  half  dozen  perhaps — thin  indeed  in  volume,  but  those  few  im 
mortal. 


126  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

As  the  new  period  progressed,  the  period  in  America  that  had 
awakened  to  the  full  realization  that  "a  new  land  needs  new 
song,"  he  became  gradually  silent  as  a  singer  and  gave  himself 
more  and  more  to  prose  criticism,  a  work  for  which  nature  had 
peculiarly  endowed  him. 

IV 

In  this  transition  group,  poets  of  external  beauty,  Spdtroman- 
tiker  yet  classicists  in  their  reverence  for  rule  and  tradition  and 
in  their  struggle  for  perfection,  the  typical  figure  is  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich  (1836-1907).  By  birth  he  was  a  New  Englander, 
a  native  of  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  where  he  spent  that 
boyhood  which  he  made  classic  in  the  Story  of  a  Bad  Boy.  Three 
years  in  New  Orleans  whither  his  father  had  moved  for  business 
reasons,  years  that  seem  to  have  made  slight  impression  upon  him, 
and  then,  his  father  dying  and  a  college  course  becoming  out  of 
the  question,  he  went  with  his  mother  to  New  York,  where  he 
resided  for  fourteen  years,  or  between  1852  and  1866.  It  was  a 
period  of  activity  and  of  contact  with  many  things  that  were  to 
influence  his  later  life.  He  held  successively  the  positions  of 
counting-room  clerk,  junior  literary  critic  on  the  Evening 
Mirror,  sub-editor  of  the  Home  Journal,  literary  adviser  to  Derby 
and  Jackson,  and  managing  editor  of  the  Illustrated  News.  He 
formed  a  close  friendship  with  Taylor  and  Stoddard  and  Sted- 
man,  and  he  saw  something  of  the  Bohemian  group  that  during 
the  late  fifties  and  early  sixties  made  headquarters  at  Pfaff's  cele 
brated  resort,  647  Broadway.  Then  came  his  call  to  Boston  as 
editor  of  Every  Saturday,  his  adoption  as  a  Brahmin,  his  resi 
dence  on  Beacon  Street,  and  his  admission  to  the  inner  circle  of 
the  Atlantic  Monthly. 

Aldrich 's  literary  life  was  from  first  to  last  a  struggle  between 
his  Bohemian  New  York  education  and  his  later  Brahmin  clas 
sicism.  His  first  approach  to  poetry  had  been  through  G.  P. 
Morris  and  Willis  on  the  Mirror  and  the  Journal.  From  them  it 
was  that  he  learned  the  strain  of  sentimental  ism  which  was  to 
produce  such  poems  as  "Mabel,  Little  Mabel,"  "Marian,  May, 
and  Maud, ' '  and ' '  Babie  Bell. ' '  Then  swiftly  he  had  come  under 
the  spell  of  Longfellow's  German  romance,  with  its  Emma  of 
Ilmenau  maidens,  its  delicious  sadness  and  longing,  and  its  wor 
ship  of  the  night — that  dreamy  old-world  atmosphere  which  had 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  127 

so  influenced  the  mid  century.  It  possessed  the  young  poet  com 
pletely,  so  completely  that  he  never  freed  himself  entirely  from 
its  spell.  Longfellow  was  his  poet  master : 

0  Poet-soul!     0  gentle  one! 

Thy  thought  has  made  my  darkness  light; 
The  solemn  voices  of  the  night 
Have  filled  me  with  an  inner  tone. 

1  '11  drink  thy  praise  in  olden  wine, 
And  in  the  cloak  of  fine  conceite 
I  '11  tell  thee  how  my  pulses  beat, 

How  half  my  being  runs  to  thine. 

Then  had  come  the  acquaintance  with  Taylor  and  Stoddard,  and 
through  them  the  powerful  influence  of  Keats  and  Tennyson. 

To  study  the  evolution  of  Aldrich  as  a  poet,  one  need  not  linger 
long  over  The  Bells  ( 1855 ) ,  that  earliest  collection  of  echoes  and 
immaturities;  one  will  do  better  to  begin  with  his  prose  work, 
Daisy's  Necklace,  published  two  years  later,  a  book  that  has  a 
significance  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  value.  As  we  read  it  we 
are  aware  for  the  first  time  of  the  fact  which  was  to  become  more 
and  more  evident  with  every  year,  that  there  were  two  Aldriches : 
the  New  York  romanticist  dreaming  over  his  Hyperion,  his  Keats, 
his  Tennyson,  and  the  Boston  classicist,  severe  with  all  exuber 
ance,  correct,  and  brilliant.  The  book  is  crude,  a  mere  melange 
of  quotations  and  echoes,  fantastic  often  and  sentimental,  yet  one 
cannot  read  a  chapter  of  it  without  feeling  that  it  was  written 
with  all  seriousness.  When,  for  example,  the  young  poet  speaks 
of  "The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes, "  we  know  that  he  speaks  from  his 
heart:  "I  sometimes  think  that  this  poem  is  the  most  exquisite 
definition  of  one  phase  of  poetry  in  our  language.  Musical 
rhythm,  imperial  words,  gorgeous  color  and  luxurious  conceit 
seemed  to  have  culminated  in  it. ' '  But  in  the  Prologue  and  the 
Epilogue  of  the  book  there  is  the  later  Aldrich,  the  classicist  and 
critic,  who  warns  us  that  the  work  is  not  to  be  taken  seriously : 
that  it  is  a  mere  burlesque,  an  extravaganza. 

In  his  earlier  work  he  is  a  true  member  of  the  New  York 
school.  He  looks  at  life  and  poetry  from  the  same  standpoint 
that  Taylor  and  Stoddard  had  viewed  them  in  their  attic  room  on 
those  ambrosial  nights  when  they  had  really  lived.  Taylor's 
Poems  of  the  Orient,  inspired  by  Shelley's  "Lines  to  an  Indian 


128  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Air"  and  by  Tennyson's  "Recollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights," 
made  a  profound  impression  upon  him.  Stoddard,  who  soon  was 
to  issue  his  Book  of  the  East,  was  also  to  the  young  poet  like  one 
from  a  rarer  world.  When  in  1858  Aldrich  in  his  twenty-second 
year  issued  his  gorgeous  oriental  poem,  The  Course  of  True  Love 
A  i-cr  Did  Run  Smooth,  he  dedicated  it  to  Stoddard,  "under 
whose  fingers  this  story  would  have  blossomed  into  true  Arabian 
roses."  To  his  next  volume  he  was  to  add  Cloth  of  Gold,  a 
grouping  of  sensuous  lyrics  breathing  the  soul  of  "The  Eve  of 
St.  Agnes":  "Tiger  Lilies,"  "The  Sultana,"  "Latakia," 
"When  the  Sultan  Goes  to  Ispahan,"  and  others.  Even  as  Tay 
lor  and  Stoddard,  he  dreamed  that  his  soul  was  native  in  the 
East: 

I  must  have  known 

Life  otherwhere  in  epochs  long  since  fled, 
For  in  my  veins  some  Orient  blood  is  red, 
And  through  my  thoughts  are  lotus  blossoms  blown. 

Everywhere  in  this  earlier  work  sensuous  beauty,  soft  music 
faintly  heard  in  an  atmosphere  breathing  sandal-wood,  and 
oriental  perfume : 

Lavender  and  spikenard  sweet, 
And  attars,  nedd,  and  richest  musk. 

Everywhere  rich  interiors,  banquets  fit  for  Porphyro  to  spread 
for  Madeline,  and,  dimly  seen  in  the  spice-breathing  twilight,  the 
maiden  of  his  dreams : 

The  music  sang  itself  to  death, 

The  lamps  died  out  in  their  perfume: 
Abbassa,  on  a  silk  divan, 

Sate  in  the  moonlight  of  her  room. 
Her  handmaid  loosed  her  scented  hair 

With  lily  lingers;  from  her  brow 
Released  the  diamond,  and  unlaced 

The  robe  that  held  her  bosom's  snow; 
Removed  the  slippers  from  her  feet 

And  led  her  to  an  ivory  bed. 

Had  Aldrich  persisted  in  such  work,  he  would  have  become 
simply  another  Stoddard,  an  echoer  of  soft  sweetness,  out  of 
print  in  the  generation  following  his  death.  But  for  Aldrich 
there  was  a  restraining  force.  The  classicist,  the  Brahmin,  within 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  129 

the  sentimental  young  poet  was  to  be  awakened  by  the  greatest 
of  the  classicists  and  the  Brahmins,  Dr.  Holmes,  himself.  ' '  You 
must  not  feed  too  much  on  '  apricots  and  dewberries, '  "  he  wrote 
in  1863.  "  There  is  an  exquisite  sensuousness  that  shows  through 
your  words  and  rounds  them  into  voluptuous  swells  of  rhythm  as 
'invisible  fingers  of  air'  lift  the  diaphanous  gauzes.  Do  not  let 
it  run  away  with  you.  You  love  the  fragrance  of  certain  words 
so  well  that  you  are  in  danger  of  making  nosegays  when  you 
should  write  poems.  .  .  .  Your  tendency  to  vanilla-flavored  ad 
jectives  and  patchouli-scented  participles  stifles  your  strength  in 
cloying  euphemisms. ' '  8 

Wise  criticism,  but  the  critic  said  nothing  of  a  deeper  and  more 
insidious  fault.  There  was  no  originality  in  Aldrich's  earlier 
work.  Everywhere  it  echoed  other  poetry.  Like  Taylor  and 
Stoddard,  the  poet  had  so  saturated  himself  with  the  writings 
of  others  that  unconsciously  he  imitated.  One  can  illustrate  this 
no  better  perhaps  than  by  examining  a  passage  which  Boynton 
in  a  review  of  the  poet  cites  as  beauty  of  the  highest  order.  It 
is  from  the  poem  ' '  Judith ' ' : 

Thy  breath  upon  my  cheek  is  as  the  air 
Blown  from  a  far-off  grove  of  cynnamon, 
Fairer  art  thou  than  is  the  night's  one  star; 
Thou  makest  me  a  poet  with  thine  eyes. 

Beautiful  indeed  it  is,  but  one  cannot  help  thinking  of  Keats' 
" Eve's  one  star"  and  Marlowe's: 

Oh,  thou  art  fairer  than  the  evening  air 
Clad  in  the  beauty  of  a  thousand  stars; 
Brighter  art  thou  than  flaming  Jupiter. 

Sweet  Helen,  make  me  immortal  with  a  kiss. 

One  has,  too,  an  uneasy  feeling  that  the  whole  poem  would  never 
have  been  written  but  for  Arnold's  "Sohrab  and  Rustum"  and 
Tennyson 's  narratives. 

Aldrich's  later  life  was  a  prolonged  struggle  against  the  poetic 
habits  of  this  New  York  period  of  his  training.  The  second  side 
of  his  personality,  however,  that  severe  classical  spirit  which  made 
war  with  his  romantic  excesses,  more  and  more  possessed  him.  ' '  I 
have  a  way,"  he  wrote  in  1900,  "of  looking  at  my  own  verse  as 

sGreenslet's  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  64. 


130  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

if  it  were  written  by  some  man  I  did  n't  like  very  well,  and  thus 
I  am  able  to  look  at  it  rather  impersonally,  and  to  discover  when 
I  have  fallen  into  mere  'fine  writing,'  a  fault  I  am  inclined  to, 
while  I  detest  it."9 

Imitation  was  his  besetting  sin.  It  was  his  realization  of  this 
fact  more  than  anything  else  that  caused  him  to  omit  from  later 
editions  such  wide  areas  of  his  earlier  work.  Of  the  forty-eight 
poems  in  The  Bells  he  suffered  not  one  to  be  reprinted;  of  his 
second  volume  he  reprinted  only  two  fragments :  ' '  Dressing  the 
Bride"  and  "Songs  from  the  Persian";  of  the  forty -seven  lyrics 
in  his  third  volume  he  admitted  only  seven  into  his  definitive 
edition,  and  of  the  twenty  in  his  fourth  volume  he  spared  but  five. 
Of  the  vast  number  of  lyrics  that  he  had  produced  before  the  edi 
tion  of  1882  only  thirty-three  were  deemed  of  enough  value  to  be 
admitted  into  his  final  canon. 

It  was  not  alone  on  account  of  its  lack  of  finish  that  this  enor 
mous  mass  of  poetical  material  was  condemned.  The  poet  Jiad 
been  born  with  nothing  in  particular  to  say.  Nothing  had  com 
pelled  him  to  write  save  a  dilettante  desire  to  work  with  beautiful 
things.  His  life  had  known  no  period  of  storm  and  stress  from 
which  were  to  radiate  new  forces.  His  poems  had  been  therefore 
not  creations,  but  exercises  to  be  thrown  aside  when  the  mood  had 
passed.  Exquisite  work  it  often  was,  but  there  was  no  experience 
in  it,  no  depth  of  life,  no  color  of  any  soil  save  that  of  the  dream 
world  of  other  poets. 

The  Aldrich  of  the  later  years  became  more  and  more  an  artist, 
a  seeker  for  the  perfect,  a  classicist.  * '  The  things  that  have  come 
down  to  us,"  he  wrote  once  to  Stedman,  "the  things  that  have 
lasted,  are  perfect  in  form.  I  believe  many  a  fine  thought  has 
perished  being  inadequately  expressed,  and  I  know  that  many  a 
light  fancy  is  immortal  because  of  its  perfect  wording."  10  He 
defended  himself  again  and  again  from  the  charge  that  he  was  a 
mere  carver  of  cherry  stones,  a  maker  of  exquisite  trifles. 
"Jones's  or  Smith's  lines,"  he  wrote  in  1897,  "  'to  my  lady's  eye 
brow' — which  is  lovely  in  every  age — will  outlast  nine-tenths  of 
the  noisy  verse  of  our  stress  and  storm  period.  Smith  or  Jones 
who  never  dreamed  of  having  a  Mission,  will  placidly  sweep  down 

•  Greenslet's  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  210. 
10 /bid.,  156. 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  131 

to  posterity  over  the  fall  of  a  girl's  eyelash,  leaving  our  shrill 
didactic  singers  high  and  dry  on  the  sands  of  time. ' ' xl 
He  has  summed  it  up  in  his  1 1  Funeral  of  a  Minor  Poet ' ' : 

Beauty  alone  endures  from  age  to  age, 
Prom  age  to  age  endures,  handmaid  of  God, 
Poets  who  walk  with  her  on  earth  go  hence 
Bearing  a  talisman. 

And  again  in  his  poem  "  Art" : 

"Let  art  be  all  in  all,"   one  time  I  said 
And  straightway  stirred  the  hypercritic  gall : 
I  said  not,  "Let  technique  be  all  in  all," 
But  art— a  wider  meaning. 

His  essay  on  Herrick  was  in  reality  an  apology  for  himself: 
"It  sometimes  happens  that  the  light  love  song,  reaching  few  or 
no  ears  at  its  first  singing,  outlasts  the  seemingly  more  prosperous 
ode  which,  dealing  with  some  passing  phase  of  thought,  social  or 
political,  gains  the  instant  applause  of  the  multitude.  .  .  .  His 
workmanship  places  him  among  the  masters.  ...  Of  passion,  in 
the  deeper  sense,  Herrick  has  little  or  none.  Here  are  no  'tears 
from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair, '  no  probing  into  the  tragic 
heart  of  man,  no  insight  that  goes  much  further  than  the  pathos 
of  a  cowslip  on  a  maiden's  grave. " 

All  this  is  true  so  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  must  never  be  forgotten 
that  beauty  is  a  thing  that  concerns  itself  with  far  more  than  the 
externals  of  sense.  To  be  of  positive  value  it  must  deal  with  the 
soul  of  man  and  the  deeps  of  human  life.  A  poet  now  and  then 
may  live  because  of  his  lyric  to  a  girl's  eyelash,  but  it  is  certain 
that  the  greater  poets  of  the  race  have  looked  vastly  deeper  than 
this  or  they  never  would  have  survived  the  years.  Unless  the 
poet  sees  beyond  the  eyelash  into  the  soul  and  the  deeps  of  life, 
he  will  survive  his  generation  only  by  accident  or  by  circumstance, 
a  fact  that  Aldrich  himself  tacitly  admitted  in  later  years  by 
dropping  from  the  final  edition  of  his  poems  all  lyrics  that  had 
as  their  theme  the  merely  trivial. 

To  the  early  Aldrich,  life  had  been  too  kind.  He  had  known 
nothing  of  the  bitterness  of  defeat,  the  losing  battle  with  fate,  the 
inexorableness  of  bereavement.  He  had  little  sympathy  with 

11  Greenslet's  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  200. 


132  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

his  times  and  their  problems,  and  with  his  countrymen.  Like 
Longfellow,  he  lived  in  his  study  and  his  study  had  only  eastern 
windows.  Herrick,  whom  he  defended  as  a  poet  immortal  because 
of  trifles  made  perfect,  can  never  be  charged  with  this.  No  singer 
ever  held  more  to  his  own  soil  and  the  spirit  of  his  own  times. 
His  poems  everywhere  are  redolent  of  England,  of  English 
meadows  and  streams,  of  English  flowers.  He  is  an  English  poet 
and  only  an  English  poet.  But  so  far  as  one  may  learn  from  his 
earlier  work,  Aldrich  might  have  lived  in  England  or  indeed  in 
France.  From  such  lyrics  as  "The  Winter  Robin "  one  would 
guess  that  he  was  English.  Surely  when  he  longs  for  the  spring 
and  the  return  of  the  jay  we  may  conclude  with  certainty  that 
he  was  not  a  New  Englander. 

During  his  earlier  life  he  was  in  America  but  not  of  it.  Even 
the  war  had  little  effect  upon  him.  He  was  inclined  to  look  at 
life  from  the  standpoint  of  the  aristocrat.  He  held  himself  aloof 
from  his  generation  with  little  of  sympathy  for  the  struggling 
masses.  He  was  suspicious  of  democracy:  "We  shall  have 
bloody  work  in  this  country  some  of  these  days,"  he  wrote  to 
Woodberry  in  1894,  "when  the  lazy  canaille  get  organized.  They 
are  the  spawn  of  Santerre  and  Fouquier-Tinville. ' ' 12  And  again, 
"Emerson's  mind  would  have  been  enriched  if  he  could  have  had 
more  terrapin  and  less  fish-ball. ' ' 

The  mighty  westward  movement  in  America  after  the  war  con 
cerned  him  not  at  all.  Much  in  the  new  literary  movement  re 
pelled  him.  He  denounced  Kipling  and  declared  that  he  would 
have  rejected  the  "Recessional"  had  it  been  offered  to  the 
Atlantic.  Realism  he  despised: 

The  mighty  Zolaistic  Movement  now 
Engrosses  us — a  miasmatic  breath 
Blown  from  the  slums.     We  paint  life  as  it  is, 
The  hideous  side  of  it,  with  careful  pains 
Making  a  god  of  the  dull  Commonplace, 
For  have  we  not  the  old  gods  overthrown 
And  set  up  strangest  idols? 

A  poet  should  be  a  leader  of  his  generation.  He  should  be  in 
sympathy  with  it;  he  should  interpret  the  nation  to  itself;  he 
should  have  vision  and  he  should  be  a  compeller  of  visions.  It 
is  not  his  mission  weakly  to  complain  that  the  old  is  passing  and 
12  Greenslet's  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  178. 


THE  TRANSITION  POETS  133 

that  the  new  is  strange  and  worthless.  The  America  of  the  seven 
ties  and  the  eighties  was  tremendously  alive.  It  was  breaking 
new  areas  and  organizing  a  new  empire  in  the  West ;  it  was  lifting 
up  a  splendid  new  hope  for  all  mankind.  It  needed  a  poet,  and 
its  poets  were  looking  eastward  and  singing  of  the  fall  of  my 
lady's  eyelash. 

V 

The  best  refutation  of  Aldrich  is  furnished  by  Aldrich  himself. 
The  years  between  1881  and  1890,  the  period  of  his  editorship  of 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  were  a  time  of  small  production,  of  pause 
and  calm,  of  ripening,  of  final  adjustment.  Following  his  resig 
nation  of  the  editorship,  he  began  again  actively  to  produce  poetry 
and  now  for  ten  or  twelve  years  he  worked  in  contemporary  life — 
in  occasional  and  commemorative  odes,  monodies  and  elegies;  in 
studies  of  the  deeper  meanings  of  life ;  in  problems  of  death  and 
of  destiny.  The  volumes  of  1891,  1895,  and  1896  contain  the 
soul  of  all  his  poetry.  From  them  he  omitted  practically  nothing 
when  at  last  he  made  up  the  definitive  edition  of  his  work.  The 
Aldrich  of  the  sixties  and  the  seventies  had  been  trivial,  artificial, 
sentimental ;  the  Aldrich  who  wrote  in  the  nineties  had  a  purpose : 
he  worked  now  in  the  deeps  of  life ;  he  was  in  earnest ;  he  had  a 
message.  It  is  significant  in  view  of  his  oft  expressed  theories  of 
poetry  that  when  in  1897  Stedman  asked  him  to  indicate  his  best 
lyrics  for  publication  in  the  American  Anthology,  he  chose  these : 
"Shaw  Memorial  Ode,"  "Outward  Bound,"  "Andromeda," 
"Reminiscence,"  "The  Last  Caesar,"  "Alice  Yeaton's  Son," 
"Unguarded  Gates,"  "A  Shadow  of  the  Night,"  "Monody 
on  Wendell  Phillips,"  "To  Hafiz,"  "Prescience,"  "Santo 
Domingo,"  "Tennyson,"  "Memory,"  "Twilight,"  "Quits"— 
all  but  one  of  them,  "Prescience,"  first  published  after 
1891.  There  are  no  "apricots  and  dewberries"  about  these 
masterly  lyrics;  they  deal  with  no  such  trivialities  as  the 
fall  of  an  eyelash.  They  thrill  with  the  problems  of  life 
and  with  experience.  It  was  not  until  this  later  period  that 
the  poet  could  say  to  a  bereaved  friend:  "You  will  recall 
a  poem  of  mine  entitled  'A  Shadow  of  the  Night/  There  is 
a  passage  here  and  there  that  might  possibly  appeal  to  you" — a 
severe  test,  but  one  that  reveals  the  true  poet.  What  has  he  for 
his  generation?  What  has  he  for  the  crises  of  life,  inevitably 


134  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

must  be  asked  at  last  of  every  poet.     His  change  of  ideals  he 
voiced  in  "Andromeda": 

The  smooth-worn  coin  and  threadbare  classic  phrase 
Of  Grecian  myths  that  did  beguile  my  youth 
Beguile  me  not  as  in  the  olden  days: 
I  think  more  grace  and  beauty  dwell  with  truth. 

Now  in  the  rich  afternoon  of  his  art  the  poet  is  no  longer  con 
tent  to  echo  the  music  of  masters.  He  has  awakened  to  the  deeper 
meanings  of  life ;  he  is  himself  a  master ;  he  now  has  something  to 
say,  and  the  years  of  his  apprenticeship  have  given  him  a  flawless 
style  in  which  to  say  it.  No  other  American  poet  has  approached 
the  perfect  art  of  these  later  lyrics.  Who  else  on  this  side  of  the 
water  could  have  written  "The  Sisters'  Tragedy,"  with  its  mel 
ody,  its  finish,  its  distinction  of  phrase  ? 

Both  still  were  young,  in  life's  rich  summer  yet; 
And  one  was  dark,  with  tints  of  violet 
In  hair  and  eye,  and  one  was  blonde  as  she 
Who  rose — a  second  daybreak — from  the  sea 
Gold  tressed  and  azure-eyed. 

And,  moreover,  in  addition  to  all  this  it  is  a  quivering  section 
of  human  life.  One  reads  on  and  on  and  then — sharply  draws  his 
breath  at  the  rapier  thrust  of  the  closing  lines. 

What  a  world  of  distance  between  the  early  sensuous  poet  of 
the  New  York  school  and  the  seer  of  the  later  period  who  could 
pen  a  lyric  beginning, 

0  short-breathed  music,   dying  on   the  tongue 

Ere  half  the  mystic  canticle  be  sung! 

0  harp  of  life  so  speedily  unstrung! 

Who,  if  'twere  his  to  choose,  would  know  again 

The  bitter  sweetness  of  the  last  refrain, 

Its  rapture  and  its  pain? 

Or  this  in  its  flawless  perfectness : 

At  noon  of  night,  and  at  the  night's  pale  end, 

Such  things  have  chanced  to  me 
As  one,  by  day,  would  scarcely  tell  a  frien^ 

For  fear  of  mockery. 

Shadows,  you  say,  mirages  of  the  brain! 

I  know  not,  faith,  not  I. 
Is  it  more  strange  the  dead  should  walk  again 

Than  that  the  quick  should  diet 


THE  TEANSITION  POETS  135 

A  few  of  his  later  sonnets,  ' '  Outward  Bound, ' '  redolent  of  his 
early  love  of  the  sea,  "When  to  Soft  Sleep  We  Give  Ourselves 
Away/'  "The  Undiscovered  Country,"  "Enamored  Architect  of 
Airy  Rhyme,"  and  "I  Vex  Me  Not  with  Brooding  on  the  Years," 
have  hardly  been  surpassed  in  American  literature. 

It  was  from  this  later  period  that  Aldrich  chose  almost  all  of 
his  poems  in  that  compressed  volume  which  was  to  be  his  lasting 
contribution  to  poetry,  A  Book  of  Songs  and  Sonnets.  It  is  but 
a  fraction  of  his  work,  but  it  is  all  that  will  survive  the  years. 
He  will  go  down  as  the  most  finished  poet  that  America  has  yet 
produced;  the  later  Landor,  romantic  yet  severely  classical;  the 
maker  of  trifles  that  were  miracles  of  art ;  and  finally  as  the  be 
lated  singer  who  awoke  in  his  later  years  to  message  and  vision 
and  produced  with  his  mastered  art  a  handful  of  perfect  lyrics 
that  rank  with  the  strongest  that  America  has  given  to  song. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

JAMES  BAYAED  TAYLOR.  (1825-1878.)  Ximena;  or,  the  Battle  of  Sierra 
Morena,  and  other  Poems,  Philadelphia,  1844;  Rhymes  of  Travel,  Ballads, 
Lyrics,  and  Songs,  Boston  and  London,  1851;  Poems  of  the  Orient,  Boston, 
1854;  Poems  of  Home  and  Travel,  1855;  The  Poet's  Journal,  1862;  The 
Picture  of  St.  John,  a  Poem,  1866;  Translation  of  Faust,  1870-1871;  The 
Masque  of  the  Gods,  1872;  Lars:  a  Pastoral  of  Norway,  1873;  The  Prophet: 
a  Tragedy,  1874;  Home  Pastorals,  Ballads,  and  Lyrics,  1875;  The  Na 
tional  Ode,  1876;  Prince  Deukalion,  1878;  Poetical  Works,  Household  Edi 
tion,  1880,  1902;  Life  and  Letters  of  Bayard  Taylor,  edited  by  Marie  Han- 
sen  Taylor  and  Horace  E.  Scudder.  2  vols.  1884;  Bayard  Taylor,  Amer 
ican  Men  of  Letters  Series,  A.  H.  Smyth.  1896;  Life  of  Bayard  Taylor, 
R.  H.  Conwell. 

RICHARD  HENRY  STODDABD.  (1825-1903.)  Footprints,  New  York,  1849; 
Poems,  Boston,  1852;  Songs  of  Summer,  Boston,  1857;  The  King's  Bellt 
New  York,  1862;  Abraham  Lincoln:  an  Horatian  Ode,  New  York,  1865; 
The  Book  of  the  East,  and  Other  Poems,  Boston,  1871;  Poems,  New  York, 
1880;  The  Lion's  Cub,  with  Other  Verse,  New  York,  1890;  Recollections, 
Personal  and  Literary,  by  Richard  Henry  Stoddard.  Edited  by  Ripley 
Hitchcock,  New  York,  1903. 

£  EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN.  (1833-1908.)^  The  Prince's  Ball,  New 
York,  1860;  Poems,  Lyrical  and  Idyllic,  New  York,  1860;  The  Battle  of 
Bull  Run,  New  York,  1861;  Alice  of  Monmouth.  An  Idyl  of  the  Great 
War  and  Other  Poems,  New  York,  1863;  The  Blameless  Prince,  and  Other 
Poems,  Boston,  1869;  The  Poetical  Works  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman, 
Boston,  1873;  Favorite  Poems.  Vest  Pocket  Series,  1877;  Hawthorne  and 
Other  Poems,  1877;  Lyrics  and  Idyls  with  Other  Poems,  London,  1879; 
The  Poetical  Works  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman.  Household  Edition, 


136  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

1884;  Songs  and  Ballads,  1884;  Poems  Now  First  Collected,  1897;  Mater 
Coronata,  1901;  The  Poems  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  1908;  Life  and 
Letters  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman.  By  Laura  Stedman  and  George  M. 
Gould.  2  vols.  New  York,  1910. 

THOMAS  BAILEY  ALDRICH.  (1836-1907.)  The  Bells.  A  Collection  of 
Chimes,  New  York,  1855;  Daisy's  Necklace  and  What  Came  of  It.  A  Lit 
erary  Episode  [Prose],  New  York,  1857;  The  Course  of  True  Love  Never 
Did  Run  Smooth,  New  York,  1858;  The  Ballad  of  Babie  Bell,  and  Other 
Poems,  New  York,  1859;  Pampinea,  and  Other  Poems,  New  York,  1861; 
Poems.  With  Portrait,  New  York,  1863;  The  Poems  of  Thomas  Bailey 
Aldrich.  Boston,  1865;  Cloth  of  Gold,  and  Other  Poems,  1874;  Flower  and 
Thorn.  Later  Poems,  1877;  Friar  Jerome's  Beautiful  Book,  and  Other 
Poems,  1881;  XXXVI  Lyrics  and  XII  Sonnets,  1881;  The  Poems  of  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich.  Illustrated  by  the  Paint  and  Clay  Club,  1882;  Mercedes, 
and  Later  Lyrics,  1884;  The  Poems  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich.  Household 
Edition,  1885;  Wyndham  Toivers,  1890;  The  Sisters'  Tragedy,  with  Other 
Poems,  Lyrical  and  Dramatic,  1891;  Mercedes.  A  Drama  in  Two  Acts, 
as  Performed  at  Palmer's  Theatre,  1894;  Unguarded  Gates,  and  Other 
Poems,  1895;  Later  Lyrics,  1896;  Judith  and  Holof ernes,  a  Poem,  1896; 
The  Works  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  Riverside  Edition,  1896;  The  Poems 
of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich.  Revised  and  Complete  Household  Edition, 
1897;  A  Book  of  Songs  and  Sonnets  Selected  from  the  Poems  of  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich,  1906;  The  Life  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  by  Ferris 
Greenslet,  1908. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

RISE  OF   THE  NATURE   WRITERS 

One  phase  of  the  new  discovery  of  America  following  the  Civil 
War — return  to  reality,  insistence  upon  things  as  they  are — ex 
pressed  itself  in  nature  study.  While  the  new  local  color  school 
was  ransacking  the  odd  corners  of  the  land  for  curious  types  of 
humanity,  these  writers  were  calling  attention  to  the  hitherto  un 
noticed  phenomena  of  fields  and  meadows  and  woodlands.  Hand 
books  of  birds  and  trees,  nature  guides  and  charts  of  all  varieties 
were  multiplied.  Nature  study  became  an  art,  and  it  ranged  all 
the  way  from  a  fad  for  dilettantes  to  a  solemn  exercise  in  the 
public  school  curriculum. 


The  creator  and  inspirer  and  greatest  figure  of  this  school  of 
nature  writers  was  Henry  David  Thoreau.  In  point  of  time  he 
was  of  the  mid-century  school  that  gathered  about  Emerson.  He 
was  born  in  1817,  two  years  earlier  than  Lowell,  and  he  died  in 
1862,  the  first  to  break  the  earlier  group,  yet  in  spirit  and  in 
fluence  and  indeed  in  everything  that  makes  for  the  final  fixing  of 
an  author's  place  in  the  literary  history  of  his  land,  he  belongs 
to  the  period  after  1870. 

His  own  generation  rejected  Thoreau.  They  could  see  in  him 
only  an  imitator  of  Emerson  and  an  exploiter  of  newnesses  in  an 
age  grown  weary  of  newnesses.  They  did  not  condemn  him :  they 
ignored  him.  Of  his  first  book,  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and 
Merrimac  Rivers,  1849,  printed  at  Thoreau 's  expense,  only  two 
hundred  and  nineteen  copies  had  been  sold  in  1853  when  the 
remainder  of  the  edition  was  returned  to  the  author.  Walden; 
or,  Life  in  the  Woods  fared  somewhat  better  because  of  the  unique 
social  experiment  which  it  recorded,  but  not  enough  better  to  en 
courage  its  author  ever  to  publish  another  book.  After  the  death 
of  Thoreau,  Emerson  undertook  to  give  him  permanence  by  edit 
ing  four  or  five  posthumous  volumes  made  up  of  his  scattered 

137 


138  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

magazine  articles  and  papers,  but  even  this  powerful  influence 
could  not  arouse  enthusiasm.  The  North  American  Review, 
which  in  1854  had  devoted  seven  patronizing  lines  to  Walden, 
took  no  note  of  Emerson's  editings  until  the  Letters  to  Various 
Persons  appeared  in  1865.  Then  it  awoke  in  anger.  To  publish 
the  letters  of  an  author  is  to  proclaim  that  author's  importance, 
and  what  had  Thoreau  done  save  to  live  as  a  hermit  for  two  years 
in  the  woods?  He  was  a  mere  eccentric,  a  " Diogenes  in  his 
barrel,  reducing  his  wants  to  a  little  sunlight";  one  of  "the 
pistillate  plants  kindled  to  fruitage  by  the  Emersonian  pollen." 
44  It  is  something  eminently  fitting  that  his  posthumous  works 
should  be  offered  us  by  Emerson,  for  they  are  strawberries  from 
his  own  garden."  He  was  an  egotist,  a  poser  for  effect,  a  con- 
demner  of  what  he  could  not  himself  attain  to.  "He  condemns 
a  world,  the  hollowness  of  whose  satisfactions  he  had  never  had 
the  means  of  testing."  "He  had  no  humor";  "he  had  little 
active  imagination  " ;  "  he  was  not  by  nature  an  observer. "  "  He 
turns  commonplaces  end  for  end,  and  fancies  it  makes  something 
new  of  them."  His  nature  study  was  only  "one  more  symptom 
of  the  general  liver  complaint."  "I  look  upon  a  great  deal  of 
the  modern  sentimentalism  about  Nature  as  a  mark  of  disease." 

The  review  was  from  no  less  a  pen  than  Lowell 's  and  it  carried 
conviction.  Its  author  spread  it  widely  by  republishing  it  in 
My  Study  Windows,  1871,  and  including  it  in  his  collected  works. 
It  was  the  voice  of  Thoreau 's  generation,  and  to  England  at  least 
it  seems  to  have  been  the  final  word.  Stevenson  after  reading  the 
essay  was  emboldened  to  sum  up  the  man  in  one  word,  a 
"skulker."  The  effect  was  almost  equally  strong  in  America. 
During  the  period  from  1868  to  1881,  not  one  of  the  author's 
volumes  was  republished  in  a  new  edition.  When  in  1870  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson,  his  foremost  champion  in  the  dark  period, 
had  attempted  to  secure  the  manuscript  journal  for  possible  pub 
lication,  he  was  met  by  Judge  Hoar,  the  latter-day  guardian  of 
Concord,  with  the  question :  ' '  Why  should  any  one  wish  to  have 
Thoreau 's  journal  printed  ? '  ' 

That  was  the  attitude  of  the  seventies.  Then  had  come  the 
slow  revival  of  the  eighties.  At  the  beginning  of  the  decade 
H.  G.  O.  Blake,  into  whose  hands  Thoreau 's  papers  had  fallen, 
began  to  publish  extracts  from  the  journals  grouped  according 
to  days  and  seasons:  Early  Spring  in  Massachusetts,  1881. 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  139 

Summer,  1884,  and  Winter,  1888.  The  break  came  in  the  nine 
ties.  Between  1893  and  1906  were  published,  in  addition  to 
many  individual  reprints  of  Thoreau 's  books,  the  Riverside  edi 
tion  in  ten  volumes,  the  complete  journal  in  fourteen  volumes, 
and  the  definitive  Walden  edition  in  twenty  volumes.  A  Thoreau 
cult  had  arisen  that  hailed  him  as  leader  and  master.  After  all 
the  years  he  had  arrived  at  his  own.  In  the  case  of  no  other 
American  has  there  been  so  complete  and  overwhelming  a  reversal 
of  the  verdict  of  an  author's  own  generation. 

Lowell  devoted  his  whole  essay  to  a  criticism  of  Thoreau  as  a 
Transcendental  theorist  and  social  reformer.  To-day  it  is  recog 
nized  that  fundamentally  he  was  neither  of  these.  His  rehabili 
tation  has  come  solely  because  of  that  element  condemned  by 
Lowell  as  a  certain  "modern  sentimentalism  about  Nature."  It 
is  not  alone  because  he  was  a  naturalist  that  he  has  lived,  or 
because  he  loved  and  lived  with  Nature:  it  was  because  he 
brought  to  the  study  of  Nature  a  new  manner,  because  he  created 
a  new  nature  sentiment,  and  so  added  a  new  field  to  literature. 
Instead  of  having  been  an  imitator  of  Emerson,  he  is  now  seen 
to  have  been  a  positive  original  force,  the  most  original,  perhaps, 
save  Whitman,  that  has  contributed  to  American  literature. 

The  first  fact  of  importance  about  Thoreau  is  the  fact  that  he 
wrote  day  after  day,  seldom  a  day  omitted  for  years,  the  6,811 
closely  printed  pages  of  his  journal,  every  part  done  with  thor 
oughness  and  finish,  with  no  dream  that  it  ever  was  to  be  pub 
lished.  It  is  a  fact  enormously  significant;  it  reveals  to  us  the 
naked  man;  it  furnishes  a  basis  for  all  constructive  criticism. 
"My  journal/'  he  wrote  November  16,  1850,  "should  be  the 
record  of  my  love.  I  would  write  in  it  only  of  the  things  I 
love,  my  affection  for  an  aspect  of  the  world,  what  I  love  to  think 
of."  And  again,  "Who  keeps  a  journal  is  purveyor  to  the 
gods."  And  still  again,  February  8,  1841,  "My  journal  is  that 
of  me  which  would  else  spill  over  and  run  to  waste,  gleanings 
from  the  field  which  in  action  I  reap.  I  must  not  live  for  it,  but, 
in  it,  for  the  gods.  They  are  my  correspondents,  to  whom  daily 
I  send  off  this  sheet,  post-paid.  I  am  clerk  in  their  counting 
house,  and  at  evening  transfer  the  account  from  day-book  to 
ledger. ' '  He  was  not  a  poser  for  effect,  for  it  is  impossible  for  one 
to  pose  throughout  6,811  printed  pages  wrought  for  no  eyes  save 
his  own  and  the  gods.  His  power  came  rather  from  the  fact  that 


140  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

he  did  not  pose;  that  he  wrote  spontaneously  for  the  sheer  love 
of  the  writing.  ' '  I  think, ' '  he  declares  in  one  place,  *  *  that  the  one 
word  that  will  explain  the  Shakespeare  miracle  is  unconscious 
ness."  The  word  explains  also  Thoreau.  Again  he  adds, 
"There  probably  has  been  no  more  conscious  age  than  the  pres 
ent.  ' '  The  sentence  is  a  key :  in  a  conscious  age,  a  classical  age 
building  on  books,  watchful  of  conventions  and  precedents, 
Thoreau  stood  true  only  to  himself  and  Nature.  Between  him 
and  the  school  of  Taylor  and  Stoddard  there  was  the  whole 
diameter.  He  was  affected  only  by  the  real,  by  experience,  by 
the  testimony  of  his  own  soul.  "The  forcible  writer,"  he  wrote 
February  3,  1852,  "stands  boldly  behind  his  words  with  his  ex 
perience.  He  does  not  make  books  out  of  books,  but  he  has  been 
there  in  person." 

In  his  nature  observations  Thoreau  was  not  a  scientist.  It 
was  not  his  object  to  collect  endless  data  for  the  purpose  of  ar 
riving  at  laws  and  generalizations.  He  approached  Nature 
rather  as  a  poet.  There  was  in  him  an  innate  love  for  the  wild 
and  elemental.  He  had,  moreover,  a  passion  for  transcending, 
or  peering  beyond,  those  bounds  of  ordinary  experience  and  cap 
turing  the  half-divined  secrets  that  Nature  so  jealously  guards. 
His  attitude  was  one  of  perpetual  wonder,  that  wonder  of  the 
child  which  has  produced  the  mythology  of  the  race.  Always 
was  he  seeking  to  catch  Nature  for  an  instant  off  her  guard.  His 
eyes  were  on  the  strain  for  the  unseen,  his  ears  for  the  unheard. 

I  was  always  conscious  of  sounds  in  Nature  which  my  ears  could 
not  hear,  that  I  caught  but  a  prelude  to  a  strain.  She  always  retreats 
as  I  advance.  Away  behind  and  behind  is  she  and  her  meaning.  Will 
not  this  faith  and  expectation  make  itself  ears  at  length?  I  never  saw 
to  the  end,  nor  heard  to  the  end,  but  the  best  part  was  unseen  and  un 
heard.— February  21,  1842. 

Nature  so  absorbed  him  that  he  lived  constantly  in  an  eager, 
expectant  atmosphere.  "I  am  excited  by  this  wonderful  air," 
he  writes,  "and  go,  listening  for  the  note  of  the  bluebird  or  other 
comer."  It  was  not  what  he  saw  in  Nature  that  was  important; 
it  was  what  he  felt.  "A  man  has  not  seen  a  thing  who  has  not 
felt  it."  He  took  stock  of  his  sensations  like  a  miser.  "As  I 
came  home  through  the  woods  with  my  string  of  fish,  trailing  my 
pole,  it  being  now  quite  dark,  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  a  woodchuck 
stealing  across  my  path,  and  felt  a  strange  thrill  of  savage  de- 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  141 

light,  and  was  strongly  tempted  to  seize  and  devour  him  raw; 
not  that  I  was  hungry  then,  except  for  that  wildness  which  he 
represented."  It  was  by  this  watchfulness  for  the  elemental, 
this  constant  scrutiny  of  instincts  and  savage  outcroppings,  that 
he  sought  to  master  the  secret  that  baffled  him.  He  would  keep 
himself  constantly  in  key,  constantly  sensitive  to  every  fleeting 
glimpse  of  harmony  that  Nature  might  vouchsafe  him. 

Nature  stirred  him  always  on  the  side  of  the  imagination.  He 
loved  Indian  arrow-heads,  for  they  were  fragments  of  a  mysteri 
ous  past;  he  loved  twilight  effects  and  midnight  walks,  for  the 
mystery  of  night  challenged  him  and  brought  him  nearer  to  the 
cosmic  and  the  infinite : 

I  have  returned  to  the  woods  and  .  .  .  spent  the  hours  of  midnight 
fishing  from  a  boat  by  moonlight,  serenaded  by  owls  and  foxes,  and 
hearing,  from  time  to  time,  the  creaking  note  of  some  unknown  bird 
close  at  hand.  These  experiences  were  very  memorable  and  valuable 
to  me — anchored  in  forty  feet  of  water,  and  twenty  or  thirty  rods 
from  the  shore  .  .  .  communicating  by  a  long  flaxen  line  with  mysteri 
ous  nocturnal  fishes  which  had  their  dwelling  forty  feet  below,  or  some 
times  dragging  sixty  feet  of  line  about  the  pond  as  I  drifted  in  the 
gentle  night  breeze,  now  and  then  feeling  a  slight  vibration  along  it, 
indicative  of  some  life  prowling  about  its  extremity,  of  dull  uncertain 
blundering1  purpose  there.  ...  It  was  very  queer,  especially  in  dark 
nights,  when  your  thoughts  had  wandered  to  vast  and  cosmogonal 
themes  in  other  spheres,  to  feel  this  faint  jerk  which  came  ...  to  link 
you  to  Nature  again. 

Burroughs,  like  most  scientists,  slept  at  night.  His  observa 
tions  were  made  by  day:  there  is  hardly  a  night  scene  in  all 
his  works ;  but  Thoreau  abounds  in  night  scenes  as  much  even 
as  Novalis  or  Longfellow.  He  was  at  heart  a  mystic  and  he 
viewed  Nature  always  from  mystic  standpoints.  In  "  Night  and 
Moonlight"  he  writes: 

Is  not  the  midnight  like  Central  Africa  to  most  of  us?  Are  we  not 
tempted  to  explore  it — to  penetrate  to  the  shores  of  its  lake  Tchad, 
and  discover  the  sources  of  the  Nile,  perchance  the  Mountains  of  the 
Moon?  Who  knows  what  fertility  and  beauty,  moral  and  natural,  are 
there  to  be  found*?  In  the  Mountains  of  the  Moon,  in  the  Central 
Africa  of  the  night,  there  is  where  all  Niles  have  their  hidden  heads. 

It  was  to  discover  these  Mountains  of  the  Moon,  these  mysteri 
ous  sources  of  the  Nile,  forever  so  far  away  and  yet  forever  so 
near,  that  Thoreau  went  to  Nature.  He  went  not  to  gather  and 


142  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

to  classify  facts;  he  went  to  satisfy  his  soul.  Burroughs  is  in 
clin«'d  to  \\omlrr  and  even  laugh  because  of  the  many  times  he 
speaks  of  hearing  the  voice  of  unknown  birds.  To  Burroughs 
the  forest  contained  no  unknown  birds;  to  Thoreau  the  forest 
was  valuable  only  because  it  did  contain  unknown  birds.  His 
straining  for  hidden  melodies,  his  striving  for  deeper  meanings, 
his  dreaming  of  Mountains  of  the  Moon  that  might  become  visible 
at  any  moment  just  beyond  the  horizon — it  is  in  these  things  that 
he  differs  from  all  other  nature  writers.  He  was  not  a  reporter ; 
he  was  a  prophet.  "My  profession  is  always  to  be  on  the  alert, 
to  find  God  in  nature,  to  know  His  lurking  places,  to  attend  all 
the  oratorios,  the  operas  in  nature.  Shall  I  not  have  words  as 
fresh  as  my  thought  ?  Shall  I  use  any  other  man 's  word  ? ' ' 

To  him  Nature  was  of  value  only  as  it  furnished  message  for 
humanity.  "A  fact,"  he  declared,  "must  be  the  vehicle  of  some 
humanity  in  order  to  interest  us. ' '  He  went  to  Nature  for  tonic, 
not  for  fact ;  he  sought  only  truth  and  freedom  and  spontaneous- 
ness  of  soul.  He  had  no  desire  to  write  a  botany,  or  an  ornithol 
ogy  ;  rather  would  he  learn  of  Nature  the  fundamentals  of  human 
living.  "I  went  into  the  woods  because  I  wished  to  live  deliber 
ately,  to  front  only  the  essential  facts  of  life,  and  see  if  I  could 
not  learn  what  it  had  to  teach,  and  not,  when  I  came  to  die,  dis 
cover  that  I  had  not  lived. '  '  Burroughs  went  into  the  woods  to 
know  and  to  make  others  to  know,  Thoreau  went  in  to  think  and 
to  feel;  Burroughs  was  a  naturalist,  Thoreau  a  supernatu 
ral  ist. 

Thoreau  belongs  completely  to  the  later  period :  he  is  as  thor 
oughly  of  American  soil  as  even  Mark  Twain  or  Lincoln  or 
Whitman.  While  Longfellow  and  Lowell,  Taylor  and  Aldrich, 
and  the  rest  of  their  school  were  looking  eagerly  to  Europe, 
Thoreau  was  completely  engrossed  with  his  own  land.  * '  No  truer 
American  ever  existed  than  Thoreau,"  wrote  Emerson  in  his 
essay.  "His  preference  of  his  country  and  condition  was 
genuine,  and  his  aversion  from  English  and  European  manners 
and  tastes  almost  reached  contempt.  ...  He  wished  to  go  to 
Oregon,  not  to  London."  It  was  this  new-worldness,  this  fresh 
ness,  this  originality  that  made  him  the  man  of  the  new  era.  He 
went  always  to  the  sources;  his  work  is  redolent  at  every  point 
of  American  soil.  His  images,  his  illustrations,  his  subject  mat 
ter,  all  are  American.  His  style,  after  he  had  outgrown  an  early 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  143 

fondness  for  Carlyle,  is  peculiarly  his  own,  wonderfully  simple 
and  limpid  and  individual.     Often  it  flows  like  poetry : 

The  sun  is  near  setting  away  beyond  Fair  Haven.  A  bewitching 
stillness  reigns  through  all  the  woodland,  and  over  all  the  snowclad 
landscape.  Indeed,  the  winter  day  in  the  woods  or  fields  has  commonly 
the  stillness  of  twilight.  The  pond  is  perfectly  smooth  and  full  of 
light.  I  hear  only  the  strokes  of  a  lingering  woodchopper  at  a  dis 
tance  and  the  melodious  hooting  of  an  owl. — December  9,  1856. 

And  what  is  this  but  poetry  ? 

On  the  morning  when  the  wild  geese  go  over,  I,  too,  feel  the  migra 
tory  instinct  strong  within  me,  and  anticipate  the  breaking  up  of  win 
ter.  If  I  yielded  to  this  impulse,  it  would  surely  guide  me  to  summer 
haunts.  This  indefinite  restlessness  and  fluttering  on  the  perch  no 
doubt  prophesy  the  final  migration  of  souls  out  of  nature  to  a  serener 
summer,  in  long  harrows  and  waving  lines,  in  the  spring  weather,  over 
that  fair  uplands  and  fertile  Elysian  meadows,  winging  their  way  at 
evening,  and  seeking  a  resting  place  with  loud  cackling  and  uproar. — 
January  29,  1859. 

Thoreau  was  one  of  the  most  tonic  forces  of  the  later  period. 
His  inspiration  and  his  spirit  filled  all  the  later  school  of  Nature 
writers.  One  cannot  read  him  long,  especially  in  his  later  and 
more  unconscious  work,  and  find  oneself  unmoved.  He  inspires 
to  action,  to  restlessness  of  soul.  Take  an  entry  like  that  of  Jan 
uary  7,  1857,  made  during  one  of  the  mpst  tumultuous  of  New 
England  winter  storms:  "It  is  bitter  cold,  with  a  cutting  N.W. 
wind.  .  .  .  All  animate  things  are  reduced  to  their  lowest  terms. 
This  is  the  fifth  day  of  cold,  blowing  weather, ' '  and  so  on  and  on 
till  one  fairly  hears  the  roaring  of  the  storm.  Yet,  despite  the 
blast  and  the  piercing  cold,  Thoreau  goes  out  for  his  walk  as  usual 
and  battles  with  the  elements  through  miles  of  snow-smothered 
wilderness.  "There  is  nothing  so  sanative,  so  poetic,  as  a  walk 
in  the  woods  and  fields  even  now,  when  I  meet  none  abroad 
for  pleasure.  Nothing  so  inspires  me,  and  excites  such  serene 
and  profitable  thought."  His  battle  with  the  wind  and  the  cold 
and  the  wilderness  grips  us  as  we  read.  We  too  would  rush  into 
the  storm  and  breast  it  and  exult  in  it ;  we  too  would  walk  with 
Nature  under  the  open  skies,  in  the  broad,  wholesome  places,  and 
view  the  problems  of  life  with  serene  soul.  It  is  this  dynamic 
element  of  Thoreau  that  has  given  him  his  following.  He  is 
sincere,  he  is  working  from  the  impulses  of  his  soul,  he  is  gen- 


144  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

nine.  He  is  not  a  scientist :  he  is  a  poet  and  a  seer.  When  we 
walk  with  Burroughs,  we  see  as  with  new  eyes;  when  with  Tho- 
reau,  we  feel.  With  Burroughs  we  learn  of  signs  and  seasons 
and  traits ;  with  Thoreau  we  find  ourselves  straining  ears  to  catch 
the  deeper  harmonies,  the  mysterious  soul  of  Nature,  that  some 
how  we  feel  to  be  intertwined  eternally  with  the  soul  of  man. 

II 

The  transition  from  Thoreau  to  John  Burroughs  was  through 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson.  Wilson  Flagg  (1805-1884)  had 
contributed  to  the  early  volumes  of  the  Atlantic  a  series  of  bird 
studies  Irving-like  in  atmosphere  and  sentiment,  but  he  had  made 
little  impression.  He  was  too  literary,  too  much  the  child  of 
the  mid  century.  In  his  study  of  the  owl,  for  instance,  he  could 
write:  "I  will  not  enter  into  a  speculation  concerning  the  na 
ture  and  origin  of  those  agreeable  emotions  which  are  so  generally 
produced  by  the  sight  of  objects  that  suggest  the  ideas  of  decay 
and  desolation.  It  is  happy  for  us,  that,  by  the  alchemy  of 
poetry,  we  are  able  to  turn  some  of  our  misfortunes  into  sources 
of  melancholy  pleasure,  after  the  poignancy  of  grief  has  been 
assuaged  by  time, ' '  and  so  on  and  on  till  he  got  to  midnight  and 
the  owl.  It  is  a  literary  effort.  There  is  lack  of  sincerity  in  it : 
the  author  is  thinking  too  exclusively  of  his  reader.  The  dif 
ference  between  it  and  a  passage  from  Thoreau  is  the  difference 
between  a  reverie  in  the  study  and  a  battle  in  the  woods.  Hig 
ginson,  who  followed  in  the  Atlantic  with  "April  Days,"  "The 
Life  of  Birds,"  and  the  other  studies  which  he  issued  as 
Out-Door  Papers  in  1863,  avoided  the  over-literary  element  on 
one  hand  and  the  over-scientific  on  the  other  and  so  became  the 
first  of  what  may  be  called  the  modern  school  of  nature  writers. 

As  we  read  Higginson 's  book  to-day  we  find  style  and  method 
curiously  familiar.  For  the  first  time  in  American  literature  we 
have  that  chatty,  anecdotal,  half-scientific,  half-sentimental  treat 
ment  of  out-door  things  that  soon  was  to  become  so  common. 
It  is  difficult  to  persuade  oneself  that  a  paper  like  "The  Life  of 
Birds,"  for  instance,  was  not  written  by  the  Burroughs  of  the 
earlier  period.  Out-Door  Papers  and  Wake-Robin  are  pitched  in 
the  same  key.  Who  could  be  positive  of  the  authorship  of  a 
fragment  like  this,  were  not  Higginson 's  name  appended: 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  145 

To  a  great  extent,  birds  follow  the  opening  foliage  northward,  and 
flee  from  its  fading,  south;  they  must  keep  near  the  food  on  which 
they  live,  and  secure  due  shelter  for  their  eggs.  Our  earliest  visitors 
shrink  from  trusting  the  bare  trees  with  their  nests;  the  song-sparrow 
seeks  the  ground ;  the  blue-bird  finds  a  box  or  hole  somewhere ;  the  red 
wing  haunts  the  marshy  thickets,  safer  in  the  spring  than  at  any  other 
season;  and  even  the  sociable  robin  prefers  a  pine-tree  to  an  apple- 
tree,  if  resolved  to  begin  housekeeping  prematurely.  The  movements 
of  birds  are  chiefly  timed  by  the  advance  of  vegetation;  and  the  thing 
most  thoroughly  surprising  about  them  is  not  the  general  fact  of  the 
change  of  latitude,  but  their  accuracy  in  hitting  the  precise  locality. 
That  the  same  cat-bird  should  find  its  way  back,  every  spring,  to  almost 
the  same  branch  of  yonder  larch-tree — that  is  the  thing  astonishing 
to  me. 

The  most  notable  thing,  however,  about  Higginson's  out-door 
papers  was  their  ringing  call  for  a  return  to  reality.  It  was 
he  who  more  than  any  one  else  created  interest  in  Thoreau ;  and 
it  was  he  who  first  gained  attention  with  the  cry,  "Back  to  na 
ture."  "The  American  temperament,"  he  declared,  "needs  at 
this  moment  nothing  so  much  as  that  wholesome  training  of 
semi-rural  life  which  reared  Hampden  and  Cromwell  to  assume 
at  one  grasp  the  sovereignty  of  England.  .  .  .  The  little  I  have 
gained  from  colleges  and  libraries  has  certainly  not  worn  so  well 
as  the  little  I  learned  in  childhood  of  the  habits  of  plant,  bird, 
and  insect.  .  .  .  Our  American  life  still  needs,  beyond  all  things 
else,  the  more  habitual  cultivation  of  out-door  habits.  .  .  .  The 
more  bent  any  man  is  on  action,  the  more  profoundly  he  needs 
the  calm  lessons  of  Nature  to  preserve  his  equilibrium. ' '  To  the 
new  generation  of  writers  he  flung  a  challenge:  "Thoreau 
camps  down  by  Walden  Pond  and  shows  us  that  absolutely  noth 
ing  in  Nature  has  ever  yet  been  described — not  a  bird  or  a  berry  of 
the  woods,  not  a  drop  of  water,  not  a  spicula  of  ice,  nor  winter, 
nor  summer,  nor  sun,  nor  star. ' '  And  again, ' '  What  do  we  know, 
for  instance,  of  the  local  distribution  of  our  birds  ?  I  remember 
that  in  my  latest  conversation  with  Thoreau  last  December,  he 
mentioned  most  remarkable  facts  in  this  department,  which  had 
fallen  under  his  unerring  eyes. ' ' 

This  was  published  in  the  Atlantic,  September,  1862.  In 
May,  1865,  as  if  in  answer  to  the  challenge,  there  appeared 
in  the  same  magazine  John  Burroughs 's  "With  the  Birds,"  a 
paper  which  he  had  written  two  years  before.  The  army 
life  of  Higginson  and  later  his  humanitarian  work  in  many 


146  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

fields  put  an  end  to  his  out-door  writings,  but  not  to  his  in 
fluence. 

in 

John  Burroughs  was  born  on  a  farm  in  Roxbury,  New  York, 
just  below  the  Otsego  County  made  famous  by  Cooper  and  the 
Leather-stocking  Tales.  His  boyhood  until  he  was  seventeen 
"was  mainly  occupied,"  to  quote  his  own  words,  "with  farm 
work  in  the  summer,  and  with  a  little  study,  offset  by  much 
hunting  and  trapping  of  wild  animals  in  winter."  One  must 
study  this  boyhood  if  one  is  to  understand  the  man's  work: 

From  childhood  I  was  familiar  with  the  homely  facts  of  the  barn, 
and  of  cattle  and  horses;  the  sugar-making  in  the  maple  woods  in 
early  spring;  the  work  of  the  corn-field,  hay-field,  potato-field;  the 
delicious  fall  months  with  their  pigeon  and  squirrel  shootings;  thresh 
ing  of  buckwheat,  gathering  of  apples,  and  burning  of  fallows;  in 
short,  everything  that  smacked  of,  and  led  to,  the  open  air  and  its  ex 
hilarations.  I  belonged,  as  I  may  say,  to  them;  and  my  substance  and 
taste,  as  they  grew,  assimilated  them  as  truly  as  my  body  did  its  food. 
I  loved  a  few  books  much;  but  I  loved  Nature,  in  all  those  material 
examples  and  subtle  expressions,  with  a  love  passing  all  the  books  of 
the  world.1 

Of  schooling  he  had  little.  "I  was  born,"  he  once  wrote,  "of 
and  among  people  who  neither  read  books  nor  cared  for  them, 
and  my  closest  associations  since  have  been  alien  to  literature 
and  art."  The  usual  winter  term  in  his  native  district,  a  year 
or  two  in  academy  courses  after  he  was  seventeen — that  was  the 
extent  of  his  formal  education.  At  twenty  he  was  married,  at 
twenty-seven,  after  having  drifted  about  as  a  school  teacher,  he 
settled  at  Washington  in  a  position  in  the  Treasury  Department 
that  held  him  closely  for  nine  years. 

It  was  a  period  of  self-discipline.  His  intellectual  life  had 
been  awakened  by  Emerson,  and  he  had  followed  him  into  wide 
fields.  He  read  enormously,  he  studied  languages,  he  trained 
himself  with  models  of  English  style.  His  love  of  the  country, 
legacy  of  the  boyhood  which  he  never  outgrew,  impelled  him  to 
a  systematic  study  of  ornithology.  Birds  were  his  avocation,  his 
enthusiasm ;  by  and  by  they  were  to  become  his  vocation. 

In  1861,  when  he  was  twenty-four,  he  came  for  the  first  time  in 
contact  with  Leaves  of  Grass,  and  it  aroused  him  like  a  vision. 

i  Notes  on  Walt  Whitman,  1867- 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  147 

It  produced  the  impression  upon  me  in  my  moral  consciousness  that 
actual  Nature  did  in  her  material  forms  and  shows;  ...  I  shall  never 
forget  the  strange  delight  I  had  from  the  following  passage,  as  we  sat 
there  on  the  sunlit  border  of  an  autumn  forest : 
I  lie  abstracted,  and  hear  beautiful  tales  of  things,  and  the  reasons  of 

things ; 

They  are  so  beautiful,  I  nudge  myself  to  listen. 
I  cannot  say  to  any  person  what  I  hear — I  cannot  say  it  to  myself — it  is 

very  wonderful; 
It  is  no  small  matter,  this  round  and  delicious  globe,  moving  so  exactly  in 

its  orbit  forever  and  ever,  without  one  jolt,  or  the  untruth  of  a  single 

second ; 
I  do  not  think  it  was  made  in  six  days,  nor  in  ten  thousand  years,  nor  in 

ten  billions  of  years; 
Nor  planned  and  built  one  thing  after  another,  as  an  architect  plane  and 

builds  a  house. 

It  was  the  touch  that  he  needed.  There  was  in  him  a  strain  of 
wildness  even  as  in  Thoreau,  an  almost  feminine  shrinking  from 
the  crowd,  a  thinking  of  Nature  as  something  apart  from  man,  a 
retreat  and  an  antidote;  Whitman  added  the  human  element, 
the  sympathetic  touch,  the  sense  of  the  value  of  man. 

Burroughs 's  first  work  appeared  that  same  year  in  the  New 
York  Leader,  a  series  of  papers  under  the  heading  "From  the 
Back  Country" — crude  things  compared  with  Higginson's  pol 
ished  work,  yet  filled  with  a  genuineness  and  a  freshness  that 
were  notable.  All  of  his  earlier  sketches  were  the  work  of  a 
careful  observer  who  wrote  from  sheer  love  of  Nature.  More 
over,  they  were  the  work  of  a  dreamer  and  a  poet.  As  the  years 
took  him  farther  from  that  marvelous  boyhood,  the  light  upon  it 
grew  softer  and  more  golden.  He  dreamed  of  it  in  the  spring 
when  the  bluebird  called  and  the  high-hole ;  he  dreamed  of  it  on 
his  walks  in  the  city  suburbs  when  the  swallows  greeted  him  and 
the  warblers.  His  Atlantic  paper  "With  the  Birds,"  now  the 
first  chapter  of  his  published  works,  begins  with  the  sentence, 
now  suppressed,  "Not  in  the  spirit  of  exact  science,  but  rather 
with  the  freedom  of  love  and  old  acquaintance,  would  I  cele 
brate  some  of  the  minstrels  of  the  field  and  forest."  And  years 
later,  when  he  wrote  the  general  introduction  to  his  works,  he 
could  say : 

My  first  book,  Wake-Robin,  was  written  while  I  was  a  government 
clerk  in  Washington.  It  enabled  me  to  live  over  again  the  days  I  had 
passed  with  the  birds  and  in  the  scenes  of  my  youth.  I  wrote  the 


148  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

book  sitting  at  a  desk  in  front  of  an  iron  wall.  I  was  keeper  of  a 
vault  in  which  many  millions  of  bank  notes  were  stored.  During  my 
long  periods  of  leisure  I  took  refuge  in  my  pen.  How  my  mind  re 
acted  from  the  iron  wall  in  front  of  me  and  sought  solace  in  memories 
of  the  birds  and  of  summer  fields  and  woods!  Most  of  the  chapters 
of  Winter  Sunshine  were  written  at  the  same  desk.  The  sunshine  there 
referred  to  is  of  a  richer  quality  than  is  found  in  New  York  and 
New  England. 

That  was  the  secret  of  the  early  work  of  John  Burroughs: 
to  him  Nature  was  a  part  of  his  boyhood,  with  boyhood's  light 
upon  it.  He  dreamed  of  her  when  the  city  homesickness  was 
upon  him  and  when  he  wrote  of  her  he  wrote  from  a  full  heart. 
He  felt  every  line  of  it;  the  light  that  plays  over  it  is  indeed 
of  "richer  quality "  than  is  found  over  any  actual  hills.  A 
part  of  his  early  popularity  came  undoubtedly  from  the 
sentiment  which  he  freely  mingled  with  his  studies  of  field  and 
woodland. 

There  is  something  almost  pathetic  in  the  fact  that  the  birds  remain 
forever  the  same.  You  grow  old,  your  friends  die  or  remove  to  distant 
lands,  events  sweep  on  and  all  things  are  changed.  Yet  there  in  your 
garden  or  orchard  are  the  birds  of  your  boyhood,  the  same  notes,  the 
same  calls,  and,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  the  identical  birds  endowed 
with  perennial  youth.  The  swallows,  that  built  so  far  out  of  your 
reach  beneath  the  eaves  of  your  father's  barn,  the  same  ones  now  squeak 
and  chatter  beneath  the  eaves  of  your  barn.  The  warblers  and  shy 
wood  birds  you  pursued  with  such  glee  ever  so  many  summers  ago, 
and  whose  names  you  taught  to  some  beloved  youth  who  now,  per 
chance,  sleeps  amid  his  native  hills,  no  marks  of  time  or  change  cling 
to  them;  and  when  you  walk  out  to  the  strange  woods,  there  they 
are,  mocking  you  with  their  ever  renewed  and  joyous  youth.  The  call 
of  the  high-holes,  the  whistle  of  the  quail,  the  strong  piercing  note  of 
the  meadow  lark,  the  drumming  of  the  grouse — how  these  sounds  ig 
nore  the  years,  and  strike  on  the  ear  with  the  melody  of  that  spring 
time  when  the  world  was  young,  and  life  was  all  holiday  and  ro 
mance.2 

The  twenty  years  following  his  first  Atlantic  paper  were  the 
years  of  his  professional  life.  He  left  his  clerkship  at  Washing 
ton  in  1873  to  become  a  national  bank  inspector,  and  until  1884, 
when  he  finally  retired  to  rural  life,  he  was  busy  with  his  duties 
as  receiver  of  broken  banks,  examiner  of  accounts,  and  financial 
expert.  During  the  two  decades  he  published  his  most  distinctive 

2  Birds  and  Poets.     "A  Bird  Melody." 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  149 

nature  volumes:  Wake-Robin,  Winter  Sunshine,  Birds  and 
Poets,  Locusts  and  Wild  Honey,  and  Pepacton,  a  small  output 
for  a  man  between  the  years  of  twenty-six  and  forty-six,  yet  one 
that  is  significant.  Not  a  page  of  it  had  been  written  in  haste, 
not  a  page  that  his  later  hand  had  found  it  necessary  to  revise. 
The  primal  freshness  of  youth  is  upon  the  books ;  they  are  as  full 
of  vitality  and  sweetness  as  a  spring  morning.  Doubtless  they 
are  all  the  better  for  being  the  enthusiasms  of  hours  stolen  from 
a  dry  profession.  It  is  tonic  to  read  them.  They  are  never  at 
fault  either  in  fact  or  in  influence ;  they  are  the  work  of  a  trained 
observer,  a  scientist  indeed,  yet  one  who  has  gone  to  Nature  like  a 
priest  to  the  holy  of  holies  with  the  glow  in  his  heart  and  the  light 
on  his  face. 

During  the  following  decade,  or,  more  exactly,  the  period  be 
tween  1884  and  1894,  he  added  four  more  books,  three  of  them, 
Fresh  Fields,  Signs  and  Seasons,  and  Riverby,  devoted  to  Na 
ture,  though  with  more  and  more  of  the  coldly  scientific  spirit. 
These  with  the  five  earlier  volumes  stand  alone  as  Burroughs 's 
contribution  to  the  field  that  he  has  made  peculiarly  his  own. 
They  contain  his  freshest  and  most  spontaneous  work. 

To  read  these  volumes  is  like  going  out  ourselves  into  the 
forest  with  an  expert  guide  who  sees  everything  and  who  has  at 
his  command  an  unlimited  store  of  anecdote  and  chatty  reminis 
cence  of  birds  and  animals  and  even  plants.  To  Burroughs, 
Nature  was  sufficient  in  herself.  He  loved  her  for  the  feelings 
she  could  arouse  within  him,  for  the  recollections  she  could  stir 
of  the  springtime  of  his  life,  for  the  beauty  and  the  harmony 
that  everywhere  he  found,  and  for  the  elemental  laws  that  he 
saw  on  all  sides  at  work  and  that  stirred  his  curiosity.  He  had 
no  desire  to  study  Nature  to  secure  evidences  of  a  governing 
personality.  He  would  draw  no  moral  and  offer  no  solutions  of 
the  problem  of  good  and  evil.  Of  the  fortunes  of  the  spirit  of 
man  he  cared  but  little ;  as  for  himself,  serene,  he  would  fold  his 
hands  and  wait.  He  was  no  mystic  like  Thoreau,  listening  for 
higher  harmonies  and  peering  eagerly  beyond  every  headland 
to  discover  perchance  the  sources  of  the  Nile.  Upon  him  there 
was  no  necessity  save  to  observe,  to  record,  to  discover  new 
phenomena,  to  enlarge  the  store  of  facts,  to  walk  flat-footed  upon 
the  material  earth  and  observe  the  working  of  the  physical  me 
chanics  about  him  and  to  teach  others  to  observe  them  and  to 


150  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

enjoy  them.  To  appreciate  the  difference  between  Burroughs 
and  Thoreau  one  has  but  to  read  them  side  by  side.  For  in- 
M;mce,  on  March  21,  1853,  Thoreau  makes  this  entry: 

As  I  was  rising  this  crowning  road,  just  beyond  the  old  lime  kiln, 
there  leaked  into  my  open  ear  the  first  peep  of  a  hyla  from  some  far 
pool  ...  a  note  or  two  which  scarcely  rends  the  air,  does  no  violence 
to  the  zephyr,  but  yet  leaks  through  all  obstacles  and  far  over  the 
downs  to  the  ear  of  the  listening  naturalist,  as  it  were  the  first  faint 
cry  of  the  new-born  year,  notwithstanding  the  notes  of  birds.  Where 
so  long  I  have  heard  the  prattling  and  moaning  of  the  wind,  what 
means  this  tenser,  far-piercing  sound? 

Burroughs  writes  of  the  same  subject  in  this  way : 

From  what  fact  or  event  shall  we  really  date  the  beginning  of 
springf  The  little  piping  frogs  usually  furnish  a  good  starting  point. 
One  spring  I  heard  the  first  note  on  the  6th  of  April;  the  next  on 
the  27th  of  February;  but  in  reality  the  latter  season  was  only  about 
two  weeks  earlier  than  the  former.  .  .  .  The  little  piper  will  some 
times  climb  a  bullrush  to  which  he  clings  like  a  sailor  to  a  mast,  and 
send  forth  his  shrill  call.  There  is  a  Southern  species,  heard  when 
you  have  reached  the  Potomac,  whose  note  is  far  more  harsh  and 
crackling.  To  stand  on  the  verge  of  a  swamp  vocal  with  these,  pains 
and  stuns  the  ear. 

Then  in  a  foot-note : 

The  Southern  species  is  called  the  green  hyla.  I  have  since  heard 
them  in  my  neighborhood  on  the  Hudson. 

Never  was  there  writer  who  kept  his  feet  more  firmly  on  solid 
earth.  He  takes  nothing  for  granted;  he  is  satisfied  only  with 
the  testimony  of  the  senses,  and  his  own  senses.  Everything — 
example,  allusion,  figure  of  speech,  subject  and  predicate — comes 
from  him  in  the  concrete.  Everything  is  specific,  localized, 
dated.  He  was  in  accord  with  his  era  that  demanded  only  re 
ality.  It  is  the  task  of  the  writer,  he  declared, ' '  to  pierce  through 
our  callousness  and  indifference  and  give  us  fresh  impressions  of 
things  as  they  really  are." 

How  permanent  is  such  work?  How  valuable  is  it?  Is  Na 
ture  then  a  thing  simply  to  be  observed  and  classified  and  reduced 
to  formulffi?  To  determine  the  average  day  on  which  the  blue 
bird  comes,  or  the  wild  geese  fly,  or  the  hyla  calls,  is  there  virtue 
in  that?  To  Burroughs,  Nature  was  a  thing  to  be  observed  ac 
curately  for  new  facts  to  add  to  the  known.  Of  Thoreau  he 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  151 

wrote:  "Ten  years  of  persistent  spying  and  inspecting  of  Na 
ture  and  no  new  thing  found  out."  Do  we  ask  of  the  poet  and 
the  seer  simply  for  mere  new  material  phenomena  found  out  to 
add  to  our  science  ?  The  supreme  test  that  must  come  at  last  to 
all  literature  is  the  question :  How  much  of  human  life  is  there 
in  it?  How  much  ''Thus  saith  the  Lord"?  Who  seeks  for 
material  things  with  eyes,  however  keen,  and  dreams  of  no 
sources  of  the  Nile,  no  vision  that  may  come  perchance  from  su 
pernatural  power  latent  in  bird  and  leaf  and  tendril,  is  a  scientist, 
however  charming  he  make  his  subject  or  however  sympathetic 
be  his  attitude.  Judged  by  such  a  standard,  Burroughs  falls 
short,  far  short  of  a  place  with  the  highest.  He  must  decrease, 
while  Thoreau  increases.  He  must  be  placed  at  last  among  the 
scientists  who  have  added  facts  and  laws,  while  Thoreau  is  seated 
with  the  poets  and  the  prophets. 

But  though  he  be  thus  without  vision  and  without  message, 
save  as  an  invitation  to  come  to  material  Nature  and  learn  to 
observe  is  a  message,  Burroughs  has  a  charm  of  manner  and  a 
picturesqueness  of  material  that  are  to  be  found  in  few  other 
writers  of  the  period.  His  power  lies  in  his  simplicity  and  his 
sincerity.  He  is  more  familiar  with  his  reader  than  Thoreau. 
He  is  never  literary,  never  affected ;  he  talks  in  the  most  natural 
way  in  the  world;  he  tells  story  after  story  in  the  most  artless 
way  of  homely  little  happenings  that  have  passed  under  his  own 
eye,  and  so  charming  is  his  talk  that  we  surrender  ourselves  like 
children  to  listen  as  long  as  he  will.  When  we  read  Thoreau 
we  are  always  conscious  of  Thoreau.  His  epithets,  his  distinc 
tion  of  phrase,  his  sudden  glimpses,  his  unexpected  turns  and 
climaxes,  his  humor,  for  in  spite  of  Lowell's  dictum,  he  is  full 
of  humor,  keep  us  constantly  in  the  presence  of  literature;  but 
with  Burroughs  we  are  conscious  of  nothing  save  the  birds  and 
the  season  and  the  fields.  We  are  walking  with  a  delightful 
companion  who  knows  everything  and  who  points  out  new  won 
ders  at  every  step. 

The  poetry  of  Burroughs  faded  more  and  more  from  his  work 
with  every  book,  and  the  spirit  of  the  scientist,  of  the  trained 
observer  impatient  of  everything  not  demonstrable  by  the  senses, 
grew  upon  him,  until  at  length  it  took  full  control  and  expressed 
itself  as  criticism,  as  scientific  controversy,  and  as  philosophical 
discussion.  Eiverly,  1894,  with  its  prefatory  note  stating  that 


152  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

the  volume  was  "  probably  my  last  collection  of  out-of-door  pa 
pers,"  marks  the  point  of  division  between  the  two  periods.  If 
we  follow  the  Riverside  edition,  at  present  [1914]  the  definitive 
canon,  eight  books  preceded  Riverby  and  eight  followed  it.  The 
groups  are  not  homogeneous;  it  is  not  to  be  gathered  that  on  a 
certain  date  Burroughs  abandoned  one  form  of  essay  and  de 
voted  himself  exclusively  to  another,  but  it  is  true  that  the  work 
of  his  last  period  is  prevailingly  scientific  and  critical.  His 
Indoor  Studies,  1889,  Whitman,  a  Study,  and  Literary  Values 
are  as  distinctively  works  of  literary  criticism  as  Arnold's  Es 
says  in  Criticism;  his  Light  of  Day  discusses  religion  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  scientist ;  his  Ways  of  Nature  is  scientific  contro 
versy;  and  his  Time  and  Change  and  The  Summit  of  the  Years 
are  philosophy. 

It  is  in  this  second  period  that  Burroughs  has  done  his  most 
distinctive  work,  though  not  perhaps  his  most  spontaneous  and 
delightful.  By  temperament  and  training  he  is  a  critic,  a  sci 
entific  critic,  an  analyzer  and  comparer.  Only  men  of  positive 
character,  original  forces,  attract  him:  Emerson  and  Whitman, 
and  later  Wordsworth,  Carlyle,  and  Arnold,  men  who  molded  the 
intellectual  life  of  their  age.  His  first  published  book  had  been 
a  critical  study,  Notes  on  Walt  Whitman,  1867,  a  work  the  most 
wonderful  in  many  ways  of  his  whole  output.  It  came  at  a 
critical  moment,  in  those  pregnant  closing  years  of  the  sixties, 
And  it  struck  clear  and  full  the  note  of  the  new  period.  Bur 
roughs 's  later  studies  of  Whitman  are  more  finished  and  more 
mature  than  this  never-republished  volume,  but  they  lack  its 
clarion  quality.  It  is  more  than  a  defense  and  an  explanation 
of  Whitman :  it  is  a  call  to  higher  levels  in  literature  and  art,  a 
call  for  a  new  definition  of  poetry,  a  condemnation  of  that  soft 
ness  and  honey  sweetness  of  song  that  had  lured  to  weakness 
poets  like  Taylor  and  Stoddard.  Poetry  henceforth  must  be 
more  than  mere  beauty  for  beauty 's  sake :  it  must  have  a  message ; 
it  must  come  burning  from  a  man 's  soul ;  it  must  thrill  with  hu 
man  life. 

And  it  is  here  that  Burroughs  stands  as  a  dominating  figure. 
He  was  the  first  of  American  critics  to  insist  without  compromise 
that  poetry  is  poetry  only  when  it  is  the  voice  of  life — genuine, 
spontaneous,  inevitable.  "How  rare,"  he  complained  in  later 
years,  "are  real  poems — poems  that  spring  from  real  feeling,  a 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  153 

real  throb  of  emotion,  and  not  from  a  mere  surface  itching  for  ex 
pression.  ' '  This  has  been  the  key  to  all  his  criticism :  literature  is 
life,  the  voicing  of  a  man 's  soul.  Moreover,  it  is  a  voicing  of  the 
national  life,  the  expression  of  a  nation's  soul: 

All  the  great  imaginative  writers  of  our  century  have  felt,  more 
or  less,  the  stir  and  fever  of  the  century,  and  have  been  its  priests  and 
prophets.  The  lesser  poets  have  not  felt  these  things.  Had  Poe  been 
greater  or  broader  he  would  have  felt  them,  so  would  Longfellow. 
Neither  went  deep  enough  to  touch  the  formative  currents  of  our 
social  or  religious  or  national  life.  In  the  past  the  great  artist  has 
always  been  at  ease  in  Zion;  in  our  own  day  only  the  lesser  artists 
are  at  ease,  unless  we  except  Whitman,  a  man  of  unshaken  faith,  who 
is  absolutely  optimistic,  and  whose  joy  and  serenity  come  from  the 
breadth  of  his  vision  and  the  depth  and  universality  of  his  sympathies.3 

The  literary  criticism  of  Burroughs — four  volumes  of  it  in 
the  final  edition,  or  nearly  one-fourth  of  his  whole  output — may 
be  classed  with  the  sanest  and  most  illuminating  critical  work  in 
American  literature.  Lowell's  criticism,  brilliant  as  it  is  at 
times,  is  overloaded  with  learning.  He  belongs  to  the  school  of 
the  early  reviewers,  ponderous  and  discursive.  He  makes  use  of 
one-third  of  his  space  in  his  essay  on  Thoreau  before  he  even 
alludes  to  Thoreau.  He  is  self-conscious,  and  self-satisfied;  he 
poses  before  his  reader  and  enjoys  the  sensation  caused  by  his 
brilliant  hit  after  hit.  Stedman,  too,  is  often  more  literary 
than  scientific.  Often  he  uses  epithet  and  phrase  that  have 
nothing  to  commend  them  save  their  prettiness,  their  affecta 
tion  of  the  odd  or  the  antique.  He  is  an  appreciator  of  litera 
ture  rather  than  critic  in  the  modern  sense.  Burroughs,  how 
ever,  is  always  simple  and  direct.  He  is  a  scientific  critic  who 
compares  and  classifies  and  seeks  causes  and  effects.  He  works 
not  on  the  surface  but  always  in  the  deeper  currents  and  always 
with  the  positive  forces,  those  writers  who  have  turned  the  direc 
tion  of  the  literature  and  the  thinking  of  their  generation.  In 
marked  contrast  with  Stedman,  he  can  place  Longfellow  and 
Landor  among  the  minor  singers:  " Their  sympathies  were 
mainly  outside  their  country  and  their  times."  He  demands 
that  the  poet  have  a  message  for  his  age.  He  says  of  Emerson : 
"  Emerson  is  a  power  because  he  partakes  of  a  great  spiritual 
and  intellectual  movement  of  his  times;  he  is  unequivocally  of 
to-day  and  New  England." 
-  3  Literary  Values,  "Poetry  and  National  Life,"  184. 


154  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Burroughs 's  nature  essays,  charming  as  they  are  and  full  as 
they  are  of  a  delightful  personality,  will  be  superseded  by  others 
as  careful  and  as  charming;  Burroughs 's  criticism  was  the  voice 
of  an  era,  and  it  will  stand  with  the  era.  It  was  in  his  later 
years  that  he  put  forth  his  real  message. 

IV 

John  Burroughs  is  the  historian  of  a  small  area ;  he  has  the 
home  instinct,  the  hereditary  farmer's  love  for  his  own  fields 
and  woods,  and  the  haunts  of  his  childhood.  He  is  contem 
plative,  tranquil,  unassertive.  John  Muir  was  restless,  fervid, 
Scotch  by  temperament  as  by  birth,  the  very  opposite  of  Bur 
roughs.  He  was  telescopic,  not  microscopic;  his  units  were 
glaciers  and  Yosemites,  Sierras  and  Gardens  of  the  Gods. 

The  childhood  of  Muir  was  broken  at  eleven  by  the  migration 
of  his  family  from  their  native  Scotland  to  the  wilderness  of 
Wisconsin,  near  the  Fox  River.  After  a  boyhood  in  what  lit 
erally  was  a  new  world  to  him,  he  started  on  his  wanderings. 
By  accident  he  found  himself  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin, 
where  he  studied  for  four  years,  the  first  author  of  note  to  be 
connected  with  the  new  state  college  movement,  the  democratizing 
of  education.  lie  pursued  no  regular  course,  but  devoted  himself 
to  chemistry,  botany,  and  other  natural  sciences  that  interested 
him,  and  then,  to  quote  his  own  words,  "  wandered  away  on  a 
glorious  botanical  and  geological  excursion,  which  has  lasted 
nearly  fifty  years  and  is  not  yet  completed,  always  happy  and 
free,  poor  and  rich,  without  thought  of  a  diploma,  of  making 
a  name,  urged  on  and  on  through  endless,  inspiring,  Godfui 
beauty." 

First  he  went  to  Florida,  walking  all  the  way,  and  sleeping  on 
the  ground  wherever  night  overtook  him ;  then  he  crossed  to 
Cuba,  with  visions  of  South  America  and  the  Amazon  beyond; 
but  malarial  fever,  caused  by  sleeping  on  swampy  ground,  turned 
him  away  from  the  tropics  toward  California,  where  he  arrived 
in  1868.  The  tremendous  scenery  of  this  west  coast,  those  Amer 
ican  Alps  edging  a  continent  from  the  Sierras  to  the  Alaskan 
glaciers,  so  gripped  his  imagination  and  held  him  that  he  forgot 
everything  save  to  look  and  wonder  and  worship.  For  years  he 
explored  the  region,  living  months  at  a  time  in  the  forests  of  the 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  155 

Yosemite,  in  the  wild  Alpine  gardens  and  glacial  meadows  of 
the  Sierra,  in  passes  and  canons,  moving  as  far  north  as  Alaska, 
where  he  was  the  first  to  see  the  great  glacier  now  called  by  his 
name,  sleeping  where  night  overtook  him,  disdaining  blanket  or 
shelter,  and  returning  to  civilization  only  when  driven  by  neces 
sity.  After  years  of  such  wandering  he  became  as  familiar  with 
the  mighty  region,  the  tremendous  western  wall  of  a  continent, 
as  Thoreau  was  with  Concord  or  Burroughs  was  with  the  banks 
of  the  Pepacton. 

Unlike  Burroughs,  Muir  sent  down  no  roots  during  his  earlier 
formative  period ;  he  was  a  man  without  a  country,  anchored  to 
no  past,  a  soul  unsatisfied,  restless,  bursting  eagerly  into  untrod 
den  areas,  as  hungry  of  heart  as  Thoreau,  but  with  none  of 
Thoreau 's  provincialism  and  transcendental  theories.  In  1869 
in  the  Big  Tuolumne  Meadows  he  was  told  of  a  marvelous,  but 
dangerous,  region  beyond,  and  his  account  of  the  episode  il 
lumines  him  as  with  a  flash-light : 

Recognizing  the  unsatisfiable  longings  of  my  Scotch  Highland  in 
stincts,  he  threw  out  some  hints  concerning  Bloody  Canon,  and  ad 
vised  me  to  explore  it.  "I  have  never  seen  it  myself,"  he  said,  "for 
I  never  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  pass  that  way.  But  I  have  heard 
many  a  strange  story  about  it,  and  I  warrant  you  will  at  least  find 
it  wild  enough."  Next  day  I  made  up  a  bundle  of  bread,  tied  my 
note-book  to  my  belt,  and  strode  away  in  the  bracing  air,  full  of 
eager,  indefinite  hope. 

His  first  out-of-doors  article,  a  paper  on  the  Yosemite  glaciers, 
was  published  in  the  New  York  Tribune  in  1871.  Later  he  con 
tributed  to  the  Overland  Monthly,  to  Harper's,  and  Scribner's 
Monthly  articles  that  have  in  them  an  atmosphere  unique  in  lit 
erature.  What  sweep  and  freedom,  what  vastness  of  scale,  what 
abysses  and  gulfs,  what  wildernesses  of  peaks.  It  is  like  sweep 
ing  over  a  continent  in  a  balloon.  One  is  ever  in  the  vast  places : 
one  thrills  with  the  author 's  own  excitement : 

How  boundless  the  day  seems  as  we  revel  in  these  storm-beaten 
sky-gardens  amidst  so  vast  a  congregation  of  onlooking  mountains. 
.  .  .  From  garden  to  garden,  ridge  to  ridge,  I  drifted  enchanted,  now 
on  my  knees  gazing  into  the  face  of  a  daisy,  now  climbing  again  and 
again  among  the  purple  and  azure  flowers  of  the  hemlocks,  now  down 
among  the  treasuries  of  the  snow,  or  gazing  afar  over  domes  and 
peaks,  lakes  and  woods,  and  the  billowy  glaciated  fields  of  the  upper 
Tuolumne,  and  trying  to  sketch  them.  In  the  midst  of  such  beauty, 


156  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

pierced  with  its  rays,  one's  body  is  all  a  tingling  palate.  Who 
would  n't  be  a  mountaineer !  Up  here  all  the  world's  prizes  seem 
nothing.— July  26,  1869. 

I  chose  a  camping  ground  on  the  brink  of  one  of  the  lakes,  where 
a  thicket  of  hemlock  spruce  sheltered  me  from  the  night  wind.  Then 
after  making  a  tin  cupful  of  tea,  I  sat  by  my  campfire  reflecting  on 
the  grandeur  and  significance  of  the  glacial  records  I  had  seen.  As 
the  night  advanced,  the  mighty  rock-walls  of  my  mountain  mansion 
sreim-d  to  come  nearer,  while  the  starry  sky  in  glorious  brightness 
stretched  across  like  a  ceiling  from  wall  to  wall,  and  fitted  closely 
down  into  all  the  spiky  irregularities  of  the  summits.  Then,  after  a 
long  fireside  rest,  and  a  glance  at  my  note-book,  I  cut  a  few  leafy 
branches  for  a  bed,  and  fell  into  the  clear,  death-like  sleep  of  the 
mountaineer. 

No  pain  here,  no  dull  empty  hours,  no  fear  of  the  past,  no  fear  of 
the  future.  These  blessed  mountains  are  so  compactly  filled  with 
God's  beauty,  no  petty  personal  hope  or  experience  has  room  to  be. 
.  .  .  Perched  like  a  fly  on  this  Yosemite  dome,  I  gaze  and  sketch  and 
bask,  oftentimes  settling  down  into  dumb  admiration  without  definite 
hope  of  ever  learning  much,  yet  with  the  longing,  unresisting  effort  that 
lies  at  the  door  of  hope,  humbly  prostrate  before  the  vast  display  of 
God's  power,  and  eager  to  offer  self-denial  and  renunciation  with  eter 
nal  toil  to  learn  any  lesson  in  the  divine  manuscript. — July  20,  1869. 

To  read  Muir  is  to  be  in  the  presence  not  of  a  tranquil,  chatty 
companion  like  Burroughs,  who  saunters  leisurely  along  the 
spring  meadows  listening  for  the  birds  just  arrived  the  night 
before  and  comparing  the  dates  of  the  hyla's  first  cry ;  it  is  rather 
to  be  with  a  tempestuous  soul  whose  units  are  storms  and  moun 
tain  ranges  and  mighty  glacial  moraines,  who  strides  excitedly 
along  the  bare  tops  of  ragged  peaks  and  rejoices  in  their  vastness 
and  awfulness,  who  cries,  "Come  with  me  along  the  glaciers 
and  see  God  making  landscapes ! "  One  gets  at  the  heart  of  Muir 
in  an  episode  like  this,  the  description  of  a  terrific  storm  in  the 
Yuba  region  in  December,  1874 : 

The  force  of  the  gale  was  such  that  the  most  steadfast  monarch  of 
them  all  rocked  down  to  its  roots  with  a  motion  plainly  perceptible 
when  one  leaned  against  it.  Nature  was  holding  high  festival,  and 
every  fiber  of  the  most  rigid  giants  thrilled  with  glad  excitement.  1 
drifted  on  through  the  midst  of  this  passionate  music  and  motion 
across  many  a  glen,  from  ridge  to  ridge;  often  falling  in  the  lee  of  a 
rock  for  shelter,  or  to  gaze  and  listen.  Even  when  the  glad  anthem 
had  swelled  to  its  highest  pitch,  I  could  distinctly  hear  the  varying 
tones  of  individual  trees — spruce,  and  fir,  and  pine,  and  leafless  oak. 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  157 

.  .  .  Toward  midday,  after  a  long,  tingling  scramble  through  copses 
of  hazel  and  ceanothus,  I  gained  the  summit  of  the  highest  ridge  in 
the  neighborhood;  and  then  it  occurred  to  me  that  it  would  be  a  fine 
thing  to  climb  one  of  the  trees  to  obtain  a  wider  outlook  and  get  my 
ear  close  to  the  ^olian  music  of  its  topmost  needles.  .  .  .  Being  ac 
customed  to  climb  trees  in  making  botanical  studies,  I  experienced  no 
difficulty  in  reaching  the  top  of  this  one,  and  never  before  did  I  enjoy 
so  noble  an  exhilaration  of  motion.  The  slender  tops  fairly  flapped 
and  swished  in  the  passionate  torrent,  bending  and  swirling  backward 
and  forward,  round  and  round,  tracing  indescribable  combinations  of 
vertical  and  horizontal  curves,  while  I  clung  with  muscles  firm  braced, 
like  a  bobolink  on  a  reed. 

He  had  more  humor  than  Burroughs,  more  even  than  Thoreau, 
a  sly  Scotch  drollery  that  was  never  boisterous,  never  cynical. 
In  the  Bloody  Canon  he  meets  the  Mono  Indians  and  finds  little 
in  them  that  is  romantic : 

The  dirt  on  their  faces  was  fairly  stratified  and  seemed  so  ancient 
in  some  places  and  so  undisturbed  as  almost  to  possess  a  geological 
significance.  The  older  faces  were,  moreover,  strangely  blurred  and 
divided  into  sections  by  furrows  that  looked  like  cleavage  joints,  sug 
gesting  exposure  in  a  castaway  condition  on  the  mountains  for  ages. 
Viewed  at  a  little  distance  they  appeared  as  mere  dirt  specks  on  the 
landscape. 

Like  Thoreau,  he  was  a  mystic  and  a  poet.  He  inherited  mys 
ticism  with  his  Scotch  blood  as  he  inherited  wildness  and  the  love 
of  freedom.  He  was  not  a  mere  naturalist,  a  mere  scientist  bent 
only  on  facts  and  laws:  he  was  a  searcher  after  God,  even  as 
Thoreau.  As  one  reads  him,  one  feels  one's  soul  expanding, 
one 's  horizons  widening,  one 's  hands  reaching  out  for  the  infinite. 
The  message  of  Muir  is  compelling  and  eager : 

Next  to  the  light  of  the  dawn  on  high  mountain-tops,  the  alpenglow 
is  the  most  impressive  of  all  the  terrestrial  manifestations  of  God; 
.  .  .  stay  on  this  good  fire  mountain  and  spend  the  night  among  the 
stars.  Watch  their  glorious  bloom  until  dawn,  and  get  one  more  bap 
tism  of  light.  Then,  with  fresh  heart,  go  down  to  your  work,  and 
whatever  your  fate,  under  whatever  ignorance  or  knowledge  you  may 
afterwards  chance  to  suffer,  you  will  remember  these  fine,  wild  views, 
and  look  back  with  joy. 

And  again  after  his  joyous  study  of  the  water  ouzel,  a  prose 
lyric,  rapturous  and  infectious,  he  cries: 

And  so  I  might  go  on,  writing  words,  words,  words;  but  to  what 
purpose1?  Go  see  him  and  love  him,  and  through  him  as  through  a 
window  look  into  Nature's  warm  heart. 


158  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  output  of  Muir,  especially  of  books,  has  been  small.  To 
one  who  cares  nothing  for  money  and  who  is  indifferent  to  fame, 
it  is  hard  to  offer  inducements.  He  wrote  only  to  please  him 
self;  he  would  not  be  commanded  or  bribed  or  begged,  for  why 
should  one  write  words  when  the  Sierras  are  in  bloom  and  the 
winds  are  calling  in  the  upper  peaks?  The  public  at  large 
knows  little  of  him,  compared  with  what  it  knows  of  Burroughs 
or  even  of  Thoreau.  His  influence,  therefore,  has  been  small. 
Though  he  had  published  many  magazine  articles,  it  was  not 
until  1894  that  he  published  The  Mountains  of  California,  his 
first  book.  Our  National  Parks  came  in  1901,  and  My  First 
Summer  in  the  Sierra  in  1911.  The  last  is  Muir's  journal,  kept 
on  the  spot,  full  of  the  thrill  and  the  freshness  of  the  original  day. 
If  it  be  a  sample  of  the  journal  which  we  have  reason  to  believe 
that  he  kept  with  Thoreau-like  thoroughness  almost  to  the  time 
of  his  death — he  died  in  December,  1914 — the  best  work  of  John 
Muir  may  even  yet  be  in  store. 

Muir  was  more  gentle  than  Thoreau  or  Burroughs,  and  more 
sympathetic  with  everything  alive  in  the  wild  places  which  he 
loved.  Unlike  Burroughs,  he  has  named  the  birds  without  a  gun, 
and,  unlike  Thoreau,  he  has  refused  to  kill  even  fish  or  rattle 
snakes.  He  could  look  on  even  the  repulsive  lizards  of  his  region, 
some  of  them  veritable  monsters  in  size  and  hideousness,  with 
real  affection: 

Small  fellow-mortals,  gentle  and  guileless,  they  are  easily  tamed, 
and  have  beautiful  eyes,  expressing  the  clearest  innocence,  so  that, 
in  spite  of  prejudices  brought  from  cool,  lizardless  countries,  one  must 
soon  learn  to  like  them.  Even  the  horned  toad  of  the  plains  and  foot 
hills,  called  horrid,  is  mild  and  gentle,  with  charming  eyes,  and  s«>  arc 
the  snake-like  species  found  in  the  underbrush  of  the  lower  forests. 
.  .  .  You  will  surely  learn  to  like  them,  not  only  the  bright  ones,  gor 
geous  as  the  rainbow,  but  the  little  ones,  gray  as  lichened  granite,  and 
scarcely  bigger  than  grasshoppers;  and  they  will  teach  you  that  scales 
may  cover  as  fine  a  nature  as  hair  or  feather  or  anything  tailored. 

And  there  is  no  more  sympathetic,  interpretative  study  among 
all  the  work  of  the  nature-writers  than  his  characterization  of 
the  Douglas  squirrel  of  the  Western  mountains : 

One  never  tires  of  this  bright  chip  of  Nature,  this  brave  little  voice 
crying  in  the  wilderness,  observing  his  many  works  and  ways,  and 
listening  to  his  curious  language.  His  musical,  piney  gossip  is  savory 
to  the  ear  as  balsam  to  the  palate;  and  though  he  has  not  exactly  the 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  159 

gift  of  song,  some  of  his  notes  are  sweet  as  those  of  a  linnet — almost 
flute-like  in  softness;  while  others  prick  and  tingle  like  thistles.  He 
is  the  mocking-bird  of  squirrels,  pouring  forth  mixed  chatter  and  song 
like  a  perennial  fountain,  barking  like  a  dog,  screaming  like  a  hawk, 
whistling  like  blackbirds  and  sparrows;  while  in  bluff,  audacious 
noisiness  he  is  a  jay. 

Emerson  visited  Muir  during  his  trip  to  the  West  Coast, 
climbed  the  precarious  ladder  that  led  to  his  room  in  the  Yosem- 
ite  sawmill,  and  passed  a  memorable  afternoon.  "He  is  more 
wonderful  than  Thoreau,"  he  said,  and  he  tried  long  to  induce 
him  to  leave  the  mountains  for  the  East,  and  to  live  in  the  midst 
of  men.  But  to  Muir  the  leaving  of  the  Yosemite  and  the  Sierra 
was  like  leaving  God  Himself.  To  him  the  city  was  the  place 
of  unnatural  burdens,  of  money  that  dulls  and  kills  the  finest 
things  of  the  soul,  of  separation  from  all  that  is  really  vital  in  the 
life  of  man. 

His  style  is  marked  by  vividness  and  fervid  power.  He  makes 
a  scene  stand  out  with  sharpness.  He  is  original ;  there  are  in  his 
work  no  traces  of  other  writings  save  those  of  the  Bible,  with 
which  he  was  saturated,  and  at  rare  intervals  of  Thoreau.  Often 
there  is  a  rhetorical  ring  to  his  page,  a  resonant  fullness  of  tone 
that  can  be  described  only  by  the  word  eloquent.  In  passages 
describing  storm  or  mountain  majesty  there  is  a  thrill,  an  excite 
ment,  that  are  infectious.  The  prose  of  John  Muir  may  be 
summed  up  as  sincere  and  vigorous,  without  trace  of  self -con 
sciousness  or  of  straining  for  effect.  Few  writers  of  any  period 
of  American  literature  have  within  their  work  more  elements  of 
promise  as  they  go  down  to  the  generations  to  come. 


Beginning  with  the  late  sixties,  out-of-door  themes  more  and 
more  took  possession  of  American  literature.  Burroughs  was 
only  one  in  an  increasing  throng  of  writers;  he  was  the  best 
known  and  most  stimulating,  and  soon,  therefore,  the  leader  and 
inspirer.  The  mid-nineteenth  century  had  been  effeminate  in 
the  bulk  of  its  literary  product;  it  had  been  a  thing  of  indoors 
and  of  books:  the  new  after-the-war  spirit  was  masculine  even 
at  times  to  coarseness  and  brutality.  Maurice  Thompson 
(1844-1901),  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  new  period,  perceived 
the  bent  of  the  age  with  clearness.  ' '  We  are  nothing  better  than 


160  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

refined  and  enlightened  savages,"  he  wrote  in  1878.  "The  wild 
side  of  the  prism  of  humanity  still  offers  its  pleasures  to  us.  ... 
Sport,  by  which  is  meant  pleasant  physical  and  mental  exer 
cise  combined — play  in  the  best  sense — is  a  requirement  of  this 
wild  element,  this  glossed  over  heathen  side  of  our  being,  and 
tin'  bow  is  its  natural  implement."4  It  was  the  apology  of  the 
old  school  for  the  new  era  of  sport.  Thompson  would  direct 
these  heathen  energies  toward  archery,  since  it  was  a  sport  that 
appealed  to  the  imagination  and  that  took  its  devotees  into  the 
forests  and  the  swamps,  but  there  was  no  directing  of  the  resurg- 
ing  forces.  Baseball  and  football  sprang  up  in  the  seventies  and 
grew  swiftly  into  hitherto  unheard-of  proportions.  Yachting, 
camping,  mountaineering,  summer  tramping  in  the  woods  and 
the  borders  of  civilization  swiftly  became  popular.  The  Adiron- 
dacks  and  the  Maine  forests  and  the  White  Mountains  sprang 
into  new  prominence.  As  early  as  1869  Stedman  had  complained 
that  The  Blameless  Prince  lay  almost  dead  on  the  shelves  while 
such  books  as  Murray's  Adventures  in  the  Wilderness  sold  enor 
mously.  For  a  time  indeed  W.  H.  H.  Murray — "Adirondack 
Murray"-— did  vie  even  with  Bonner's  Ledger  in  popularity. 
He  threw  about  the  wilderness  an  alluring,  half  romantic  at 
mosphere  that  appealed  to  the  popular  imagination  and  sent 
forth,  eager  and  compelling,  what  in  later  days  came  to  be  known 
as  "the  call  of  the  wild."  His  books  have  not  lasted.  There 
is  about  them  a  declamatory,  artificial  element  that  sprang  too 
often  from  the  intellect  rather  than  the  heart.  Charles  Dudley 
"Warner  in  his  In  the  Wilderness,  1878,  and  William  H.  Gibson 
in  such  books  as  Camp  Life  in  the  Woods,  sympathetically  illus 
trated  by  their  author,  were  far  more  sincere  and  wholesome. 
Everywhere  for  a  decade  or  more  there  was  appeal  for  a  return 
to  the  natural  and  the  free,  to  the  open-air  games  of  the  old 
English  days,  to  hunting  and  trapping  and  camping — a  mascu 
line,  red-blooded  resurgence  of  the  savage,  a  return  to  the  wild. 
The  earlier  phase  of  the  period  may  be  said  to  have  culminated 
in  1882  with  the  founding  of  Outing,  a  magazine  devoted  wholly 
to  activities  in  the  open  air. 

The  later  eighties  and  the  nineties  are  the  period  of  the  bird 
books.  C.  C.  Abbott's  A  Naturalist's  Rambles  About  Home, 
1884;  Olive  Thome  Miller's  Bird  Ways,  1885;  Bradford  Tor- 

*  The  Witchery  of  Archery,  1878. 


RISE  OF  THE  NATURE  WRITERS  161 

rey's  Birds  in  the  Bush,  1885;  and  Florence  Merriam  Bailey's 
Birds  Through  an  Opera  Glass,  1889,  may  be  taken  as  representa 
tive.  Bird  life  and  bird  ways  for  a  period  became  a  fad;  en 
thusiastic  observers  sprang  up  everywhere;  scientific  treatises 
and  check  lists  and  identification  guides  like  Chapman's  Hand 
book  of  Birds  of  Eastern  North  America,  began  to  appear  in 
numbers.  What  the  novelists  of  locality  were  doing  for  the  un 
usual  human  types  in  isolated  corners  of  the  land,  the  nature 
writers  were  doing  for  the  birds. 

Of  all  the  later  mass  of  Nature  writings,  however,  very  little 
is  possessed  of  literary  distinction.  Very  largely  it  is  journalis 
tic  in  style  and  scientific  in  spirit.  Only  one  out  of  the  later 
group,  Bradford  Torrey,  compels  attention.  Beyond  a  doubt 
it  is  already  safe  to  place  him  next  in  order  after  Burroughs  and 
Muir.  He  is  more  of  an  artist  than  Burroughs,  and  he  is  more 
literary  and  finished  than  Muir.  In  his  attitude  toward  Nature 
he  is  like  Thoreau — sensitive,  sympathetic,  reverent.  It  was  he 
who  edited  the  journals  of  Thoreau  in  their  final  form,  and  it 
was  he  also  who  after  that  experience  wrote  what  is  undoubtedly 
the  most  discriminating  study  that  has  yet  been  made  of  the 
great  mystic  naturalist. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

JOHN  BURROUGHS.  (1837 .)  Notes  on  Walt  Whitman,  as  Poet  and 

Person,  New  York,  1867;  Wake-Robin,  1871;  Winter  Sunshine,  1875;  Birds 
and  Poets,  1877;  Locusts  and  Wild  Honey,  1879;  Pepacton,  1881;  Fresh 
Fields,  1884;  Signs  and  Seasons,  188G;  Indoor  Studies,  1889;  Riverby, 
1894;  Whitman,  a  Study,  1896;  The  Light  of  Day,  1900;  Literary  Values, 
1904;  Far  and  Near,  1904;  Ways  of  Nature,  1905;  Leaf  and  Tendril,  1908; 
Time  and  Change,  1912;  The  Summit  of  the  Years,  1913;  Our  Friend  John 
Burroughs.  By  Clara  Barrus.  1914. 

JOHN  MUIR.  (1838-1914.)  "Studies  in  the  Sierras,"  a  series  of  papers 
in  Scribner's  Monthly,  1878;  The  Mountains  of  California,  1894;  Our 
National  Parks,  1901;  Stickeen,  the  Story  of  a  Dog,  1909;  My  First 
Summer  in  the  Sierra,  1911;  The  Story  of  My  Boyhood  and  Youth,  1913; 
Letters  to  a  Friend,  1915. 

WILLIAM  HAMILTON  GIBSON.  (1850-1896.)  Camp  Life  in  the  Woods 
and  the  Tricks  of  Trapping  and  Trap-Making,  1876;  Pastoral  Days,  or 
Memories  of  a  New  England  Year,  1882;  Highways  and  Byways,  or  Saun- 
terings  in  New  England,  1883;  Happy  Hunting  Grounds,  a  Tribute  to  the 
Woods  and  Fields,  1886;  Strolls  by  Starlight  and  Sunshine,  1890;  Sharp 
Eyes,  1891;  Our  Edible  Toadstools  and  Mushrooms,  1895. 

CHARLES  CONRAD  ABBOTT.     (1843 .)     The  Stone  Age  in  New  Jersey, 


162  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

1876;  Primitive  Industry,  1881;  A  Naturalist's  Rambles  About  Home, 
1884;  Upland  and  Meadow,  1886;  Wasteland  Wanderings,  1887;  Days  out 
of  Doors,  1889;  Outings  at  Odd  Times,  1890;  Recent  Rambles,  1892; 
Outings  in  a  Tree-Top,  1894;  The  Birds  About  Us,  1894;  Notes  of  the 
Night,  1895;  Binlland  Echoes,  1896;  The  Freedom  of  the  Fields,  1898; 
Clear  Skies  and  Cloudy,  1899;  In  Nature's  Realm,  1900. 

"OLIVE  THOBXE  MILLER" — HARRIET  MANN  MILLER,  (1831 .)  Little 

Folks  in  Feathers  and  Fur,  1879;  Queer  Pets  at  Marcy's,  1880;  Bird 
Ways,  1885;  In  Nesting  Time,  1888;  Four  Handed  Folk,  1890;  Little 
Brothers  of  the  Air,  1890;  Bird-Lover  in  the  West,  1894;  Upon  the  Tree 
Tops,  1896;  The  First  Book  of  Birds,  1899;  True  Bird  Stories,  1903; 
With  the  Birds  in  Maine,  1904;  and  others. 

BRADFORD  TORREY.  (1843-1912.)  Birds  in  the  Bush,  1885;  A  Rambler's 
Lease,  1889;  The  Foot-Path  Way,  1892;  A  Florida  Sketch-Book,  1894; 
Spring  Notes  from  Tennessee,  1896:  1  \\>,r1d  of  Green  Hills,  1898;  Every- 
Day  Birds,  1900;  Footing  It  in  Franconia,  1900;  The  Clerk  of  the  Woods, 
1903;  Nature's  Invitation,  1904;  Friends  on  the  Shelf,  1906. 

FLORENCE  MEBRIAM  BAILEY.  (1863 .)  Birds'  Through  an  Opera 

Glass,  1889;  My  Summer  in  a  Mormon  Village,  1895;  A  Birding  on  a 
Bronco,  1896;  Birds  of  Village  and  Field,  1898;  Handbook  of  Birds  of 
Western  United  States,  1902. 

FRANK  BOLLES.  (1856-1894.)  Land  of  the  Lingering  Snow,  1891; 
At  the  North  of  Bearcamp  Water:  Chronicles  of  a  Stroller  in  New  Eng 
land  from  July  to  December,  1893;  From  Blomidon  to  Smoky,  1895. 


CHAPTER  IX 

WALT   WHITMAN 

Whitman  and  Thoreau  stand  as  the  two  prophets  of  the  mid 
century,  both  of  them  offspring  of  the  Transcendental  move 
ment,  pushing  its  theories  to  their  logical  end,  both  of  them 
voices  in  the  wilderness  crying  to  deaf  or  angry  ears,  both  of 
them  unheeded  until  a  new  generation  had  arisen  to  whom  they 
had  become  but  names  and  books.  Thoreau  was  born  in  1817; 
Whitman  in  1819,  the  year  of  Lowell,  Story,  Parsons,  Herman 
Melville,  J.  G.  Holland,  Julia  Ward  Howe,  and  E.  P.  Whipple, 
and  of  the  Victorians,  Kingsley,  Ruskin,  George  Eliot,  and  Ar 
thur  Hugh  Clough.  Whitman  published  Leaves  of  Grass,  his 
first  significant  volume,  in  1855,  the  year  of  Hiawatha,  of  Maud, 
and  of  Arnold's  Poems.  He  issued  it  again  in  1856  and  again 
in  1860 — a  strange  nondescript  book  rendered  all  the  more 
strange  by  the  fact,  thoroughly  advertised  in  the  second  edition, 
that  it  had  won  from  Emerson  the  words:  "I  find  it  the  most 
extraordinary  piece  of  wit  and  wisdom  that  America  has  yet 
contributed.  ...  I  greet  you  at  the  beginning  of  a  great  ca 
reer."  But  even  the  compelling  name  of  Emerson  could  not 
sell  the  book;  little  notice,  in  fact,  was  taken  of  it  save  as  a  few 
voices  expressed  horror  and  anger;  and  when  in  1862  Whitman 
became  lost  in  the  confusion  of  the  war,  he  had  made  not  so  much 
impression  upon  America  as  had  Thoreau  at  the  time  of  his 
death  that  same  year.  Until  well  into  the  seventies  Walt  Whit 
man  seemed  only  a  curious  phenomenon  in  an  age  grown  accus 
tomed  to  curious  phenomena. 

The  antecedents  and  the  early  training  of  Whitman  were  far 
from  literary.  He  came  from  a  race  of  Long  Island  farmers 
who  had  adhered  to  one  spot  for  generations.  No  American  was 
ever  more  completely  a  product  of  our  own  soil. 

My  tongue,  every  atom  of  my  blood,  formed  from  this  soil,  this  air, 

Born  here  of  parents  born  here, 

From  parents  the  same,  and  their  parents'  parents  the  same. 

They  were  crude,  vigorous  plowmen,  unbookish  and  elemental. 

163 


164  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  father  was  the  first  to  break  from  the  soil  and  the  ancestral 
environment,  but  he  left  it  only  to  become  a  laborer  on  buildings 
in  the  neighboring  city  of  Brooklyn. 

The  boyhood  of  Whitman  was  passed  in  the  city,  though  with 
long  vacations  in  the  home  of  his  grandparents  on  Long  Island. 
His  schooling  was  brief  and  desultory.  He  left  the  schools  at 
twelve  to  become  office  boy  for  a  lawyer  and  from  that  time  on 
he  drifted  aimlessly  from  one  thing  to  another,  serving  for  brief 
periods  as  doctor's  clerk,  compositor  in  a  country  printing  office, 
school  teacher  in  various  localities,  editor  and  proprietor  of  a 
rural  weekly,  stump  speaker  in  the  campaign  of  1840,  editor  of 
various  small  journals,  contributor  of  Hawthornesque  stories 
and  sketches  to  papers  and  magazines,  writer  of  a  melodramatic 
novel,  and  in  1846  editor  of  the  Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle.  But  he 
could  hold  to  nothing  long.  In  1848  he  was  induced  by  a  stranger 
who  had  taken  a  fancy  to  him  to  go  to  New  Orleans  as  editor 
of  the  Crescent  newspaper,  but  within  a  year  he  was  back  again 
in  New  York,  where  for  the  next  few  years  he  maintained  a  half- 
loafing,  half-working  connection  with  several  papers  and  peri 
odicals. 

It  was  during  this  period  that  he  made  himself  so  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  middle  and  lower  strata  of  New  York  City 
life.  He  spent  hours  of  every  day  riding  on  Broadway  vehi 
cles  and  on  Fulton  ferry  boats  and  making  himself  boon  com 
panion  of  all  he  met.  He  knew  the  city  as  Muir  knew  the  peaks 
and  mountain  gardens  of  the  Sierra,  and  he  took  the  same  de 
light  in  discovering  a  new  specimen  of  humanity  on  a  boat  or 
an  omnibus  that  Muir  might  take  in  finding  a  new  plant  on  an 
Alaska  glacier. 

I  knew  all  the  drivers  then,  Broadway  Jack,  Dressmaker,  Balky 
Bill,  George  Storms,  Old  Elipbant,  his  brother,  Young  Eliphant  (who 
came  afterward),  Tippy,  Pop  Rice,  Big  Frank,  Yellow  Joe,  Pete  Cal- 
lahan,  Patsey  Dee,  and  dozens  more;  for  there  were  hundreds.  They 
had  immense  qualities,  largely  animal — eating,  drinking,  women — 
great  personal  pride,  in  their  way — perhaps  a  few  slouches  here  and 
there,  but  I  should  have  trusted  the  general  run  of  them,  in  their  sim- 
]>!••  -ood  will  and  honor,  under  all  circumstances.1 

Almost  daily,  later  ('50  to  '60),  I  cross'd  on  the  boats,  often  up  in 
the  pilot-houses  where  I  could  get  a  full  sweep,  absorbing  shows,  ac- 

i  Specimen  Days. 


WALT  WHITMAN  165 

companiments,  surroundings.  What  oceanic  currents,  eddies,  under 
neath — the  great  tides  of  humanity  also,  with  ever-shifting  movements. 
Indeed,  I  have  always  had  a  passion  for  ferries;  to  me  they  afford 
inimitable,  streaming,  never-failing,  living  poems.  The  river  and  bay 
scenery,  all  about  New  York  island,  any  time  of  a  fine  day — hurrying, 
splashing  sea-tides — the  changing  panorama  of  steamers,  all  sizes. 
.  .  .  My  old  pilot  friends,  the  Balsirs,  Johnny  Cole,  Ira  Smith,  Wil 
liam  White,  and  my  young  ferry  friend,  Tom  Gere — how  well  I  re 
member  them  all.2 

I  find  in  this  visit  to  New  York,  and  the  daily  contact  and  rapport 
with  its  myriad  people,  on  the  scale  of  the  oceans  and  tides  the  best, 
most  effective  medicine  my  soul  has  yet  partaken — the  grandest  physi 
cal  habitat  and  surroundings  of  land  and  water  the  globe  affords.1 

The  earlier  Whitman  is  a  man  par  excellence  of  the  city  as 
Muir  is  of  the  mountains  and  Thoreau  of  the  woods. 


A  jungle  of  writings  has  sprung  up  about  Whitman ;  as  many 
as  four  biographies  of  him  have  appeared  in  a  single  year,  yet 
aside  from  two  or  three  careful  studies,  like  those  of  Perry  and 
Carpenter,  no  really  scholarly  or  unbiased  work  has  been  issued. 
Before  the  last  word  can  be  spoken  of  the  poet  there  must  be  an 
adequate  text  with  variorum  readings  and  chronological  arrange 
ment.  The  present  definitive  edition  is  a  chaos,  almost  useless 
for  purposes  of  study.  New  and  old  are  mixed  indiscrim- 
inatingly.  The  * '  Chants  Democratic, ' '  for  instance,  of  the  earlier 
editions  have  been  dismembered  and  scattered  from  end  to  end 
of  the  book.  All  of  the  older  poems  were  in  constant  state  of 
revision  from  edition  to  edition,  until  now  patches  from  every 
period  of  the  poet's  life  may  be  found  on  many  of  them.  Large 
sections  of  the  earlier  editions  were  omitted,  enough  indeed  at 
one  time  and  another  to  make  up  a  volume.  The  fact  is  impor 
tant,  since  the  material  rejected  by  a  poet  at  different  stages  in 
his  evolution  often  tells  much  concerning  his  art. 

There  is,  moreover,  a  strange  dearth  of  biographical  material 
at  critical  points  in  Whitman's  life,  notably  during  that  forma 
tive  period  preceding  the  first  issue  of  Leaves  of  Grass.  In  his 
later  years  he  talked  of  his  own  experiences  and  aims  and  ideals 
with  the  utmost  freedom;  through  Traubel,  his  Boswell,  he  put 

2  Specimen  Days. 


166  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

himself  on  record  with  minuteness;  his  poetic  work  is  all  auto 
biographical  ;  and  almost  all  of  his  editions  are  prefaced  by  long 
explanations  and  defenses,  yet  of  the  really  significant  periods  of 
his  life  we  know  little.  A  crude  man  of  the  people,  a  Broadway 
rough,  as  he  described  himself,  who  has  been  writing  very  or 
dinary  poems  and  stories  and  editorials — how  ordinary  we  can 
easily  judge,  for  very  many  of  them  have  been  preserved — 
suddenly  brings  out  a  book  of  poems  as  unlike  any  earlier  work 
of  his  or  any  previous  work  of  his  nation  or  language  as  an  issue 
of  the  Amaranth  or  the  Gem  would  be  unlike  the  book  of  Amos. 
What  brought  about  this  remarkable  climax?  Was  it  the  re 
sult  of  an  evolution  within  the  poet's  soul,  an  evolution  extend 
ing  over  a  period  of  years  ?  Did  it  come  as  a  sudden  inspiration 
or  as  a  deliberate  consummation  after  a  study  of  models?  We 
do  not  know.  There  are  no  contemporary  letters,  no  transition 
poems,  no  testimony  of  any  friend  to  whom  the  poet  laid  bare  his 
soul.  At  one  period  we  have  verses  like  these: 

We  are  all  docile  dough-faces, 

They  knead  us  with  the  fist, 
They,  the  dashing  Southern  lords, 

We  labor  as  they  list; 
For  them  we  speak — or  hold  our  tongues, 

For  them  we  turn  and  twist. 

Then  suddenly  without  warning  we  have  this : 

Free,  fresh,  savage, 

Fluent,  luxuriant,  self-content,  fond  of  persons  and  places, 

Fond  of  fish-shape  Paumanok,  where  I  was  born, 

Fond  of  the  sea — lusty-begotten  and  various, 

Boy  of  the  Mannahatta,  the  city  of  ships,  my  city, 

Solitary,  singing  in  the  West,  I  strike  up  for  a  new  world. 

That  is  the  problem  of  Walt  Whitman,  a  problem  the  most 
baffling  and  the  most  fascinating  in  the  later  range  of  American 
literature. 


There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  primal  impulse  in  the  crea 
tion  of  Leaves  of  Grass  came  from  the  intellectual  and  moral  un 
rest  of  the  thirties  and  the  forties.  Whitman  caught  late,  per 
haps  latest  of  all  the  writers  of  the  period,  the  Transcendental 


WALT  WHITMAN  167 

spirit  that  had  so  unsettled  America  and  the  rest  of  the  world 
as  well.  "What  a  fertility  of  projects  for  the  salvation  of  the 
world ! ' '  Emerson  had  cried  in  1844.  Who  * '  will  ever  forget  what 
was  somewhat  vaguely  called  the  *  Transcendental  Movement '  of 
thirty  years  ago"?  Lowell  had  asked  in  1865.  " Apparently 
set  astir  by  Carlyle  's  essays  on  the  '  Signs  of  the  Times, '  and  on 
'History/  the  final  and  more  immediate  impulse  seemed  to  be 
given  by  'Sartor  Resartus.'  At  least  the  republication  in  Bos 
ton  of  that  wonderful  Abraham  a  Sancta  Clara  sermon  on  Fal- 
staff's  text  of  the  miserable  forked  radish  gave  the  signal  for 
a  sudden  mental  and  moral  mutiny.  .  .  .  The  nameless  eagle  of 
the  tree  Ygdrasil  was  about  to  set  at  last,  and  wild-eyed  enthusi 
asts  rushed  from  all  sides,  eager  to  thrust  under  the  mystic 
bird  that  chalk  egg  from  which  the  newer  and  fairer  creation 
was  to  be  hatched  in  due  time. ' ' 3  Whitman  was  a  product  of 
this  ferment.  He  took  its  exaggerations  and  its  wild  dreams  as 
solemn  fact.  He  read  Emerson  and  adopted  his  philosophy 
literally  and  completely:  " Whoso  would  be  a  man  must  be  a 
nonconformist."  "He  who  would  gather  immortal  palms  must 
not  be  hindered  by  the  name  of  goodness."  "Insist  on  your 
self;  never  imitate."  "Welcome  evermore  to  gods  and  men  is 
the  self -helping  man.  For  him  all  doors  are  flung  wide ;  him  all 
tongues  greet,  all  honors  crown,  all  eyes  follow  with  desire.  Our 
love  goes  out  to  him."  "Trust  thyself;  every  heart  vibrates  to 
that  iron  string."  "With  consistency  a  great  soul  has  simply 
nothing  to  do, ' '  and  so  on  and  on. 

All  criticism  of  Whitman  must  begin  with  the  fact  that  he 
was  uneducated  even  to  ignorance.  He  felt  rather  than 
thought.  Of  the  intellectual  life  in  the  broader  sense — science, 
analysis,  patient  investigation — he  knew  nothing.  When  he  read 
he  read  tumultuously,  without  horizon,  using  his  emotions  and 
his  half  conceptions  as  interpreters.  A  parallel  may  be  drawn 
between  him  and  that  other  typical  product  of  the  era,  Mrs. 
Eddy,  the  founder  of  the  Christian  Science  cult.  Both  were 
mystics,  almost  pathologically  so ;  both  were  electric  with  the  urge 
of  physical  health;  both  were  acted  upon  by  the  transcendental 
spirit  of  the  era ;  both  were  utterly  without  humor ;  and  both  in 
all  seriousness  set  about  to  establish  a  new  conception  of  re 
ligion. 

3  Works,  i:  361. 


168  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

I  too,  following  many,  and  followed  by  many,  inaugurate  a  Religion. 

To  Whitman  the  religions  leader  of  an  era  was  its  poet.  He 
would  broaden  the  conception  of  the  Poet  until  he  made  of  him 
the  leader  and  the  savior  of  his  age. 

The  maker  of  poems  settles  justice,  reality,  immortality, 

His  insight  and  power  encircle  things  and  the  human  race, 

He  is  the  glory  and  extract,  thus  far,  of  things,  and  of  the  human  race. 

The  singers  do  not  beget — only  THE  POET  begets, 

The  singers  are  welcomed,  understood,  appear  often  enough — but  rare 

has  the  day  been,  likewise  the  spot,  of  the  birth  of  the  maker  of 

poems, 
Not  every  century,  or  every  five  centuries,  has  contained  such  a  day, 

for  all  its  names. 

With  assurance  really  sublime  he  announced  himself  as  this 
poet  of  the  new  era,  this  new  prophet  of  the  ages : 

Bearded,  sunburnt,  gray-necked,   forbidding,   I   have   arrived 
To  be  wrestled  with. 

I  know  perfectly  well  my  own  egotism, 

I  know  my  omnivorous  words,  and  I  cannot  say  any  less, 

And  would  fetch  you,  whoever  you  are,   flush  with  myself. 

He  hails  as  comrade  and  fellow  savior  even  Him  who  was 
crucified : 

We  few,  equals,  indifferent  of  lands,  indifferent  of  times, 

We,  inclosers  of  all  continents,  all  castes — allower  of  all  theologies, 

Compassion  at  ers,  perceivers,  rapport  of  men, 

We  walk  silent  among  disputes  and  assertions,  but  reject  not  the  dis- 
puters,  nor  anything  that  is  asserted, 

We  hear  the  bawling  and  din — we  are  reached  at  by  divisions,  jeal 
ousies,  recriminations  on  every  side, 

They  close  peremptorily  upon  us  to  surround  us,  my  comrade, 

Yet  we  walk  unheld,  free,  the  whole  earth  over,  journeying  up  and 
down,  till  we  make  our  ineffaceable  mark  upon  time  and  the  di 
verse  eras, 

Till  we  saturate  time  and  eras,  that  the  men  and  women  of  races,  ages 
to  come,  may  prove  brethren  and  lovers  as  we  are. 

He  too  would  give  his  life  to  the  lowly  and  the  oppressed ;  he 
too  would  eat  with  publicans  and  sinners ;  he  too  would  raise  the 
sick  and  the  dying: 

To  any  one  dying — thither  I  speed,  and  twist  the  knob  of  the  door, 
Turn  the  bed-clothes  toward  the  foot  of  the  bed, 


WALT  WHITMAN  169 

Let  the  physician  and  the  priest  go  home 

I  seize  the  descending  man,  and  raise  him  with  resistless  will. 

0  despairer,  here  is  my  neck, 

By  God!  you  shall  not  go  down!     Hang  your  whole  weight  upon  me. 

1  dilate  you  with  tremendous  breath — I  buoy  you  up, 
Every  room  of  the  house  do  I  fill  with  an  armed  force, 
Lovers  of  me,  bafflers  of  graves. 

Sleep !     I  and  they  keep  guard  all  night, 

Not  doubt — not  decease  shall  dare  to  lay  finger  upon  you, 

I  have  embraced  you. 

The  poetic  message  of  Whitman,  the  new  message  that  was,  as 
he  believed,  "to  drop  in  the  earth  the  germs  of  a  greater  re 
ligion,"  he  summed  up  himself  in  the  phrase  "The  greatness  of 
Love  and  Democracy" — Love  meaning  comradeship,  hearty 
"hail,  fellow,  well  met"  to  all  men  alike;  Democracy  meaning 
the  equality  of  all  things  and  all  men — en  masse.  He  is  to  be 
the  poet  of  the  East  and  the  West,  the  North  and  the  South 
alike ;  he  is  to  be  the  poet  of  all  occupations,  and  of  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men.  He  salutes  the  whole  world  in  toto  and  in 
detail.  A  great  part  of  Leaves  of  Grass  is  taken  up  with 
enumerations  of  the  universality  and  the  detail  of  his  poetic  sym 
pathy.  He  covers  the  nation  with  the  accuracy  of  a  gazetteer, 
and  he  enumerates  its  industries  and- its  population,  simply  that 
he  may  announce, ' '  I  am  the  poet  of  these  also. ' ' 

The  appearance  of  Whitman  marks  the  first  positive  resur 
gence  of  masculinity  in  mid-century  America.  He  came  as  the 
first  loud  protest  against  sentimentalism,  against  Longfellowism, 
against  a  prudish  drawing-room  literature  from  which  all  life 
and  masculine  coarseness  had  been  refined.  Whitman  broke  into 
the  American  drawing-room  as  a  hairy  barbarian,  uncouth  and 
unsqueamish,  a  Goth  let  loose  among  ladies,  a  Vandal  smashing 
the  bric-a-brac  of  an  over-refined  generation.  He  came  in  with 
a  sudden  leap,  unlooked-for,  unannounced,  in  all  his  nakedness 
and  vulgarity  like  a  primitive  man,  and  proceeded  to  sound  his 
barbaric  yawp  over  the  roofs  of  the  world.  He  mixed  high  and 
low,  blab  and  divinity,  because  he  knew  no  better,  Like  the 
savage  that  he  was  he  adorned  himself  with  scraps  of  feathers 
from  his  reading — fine  words:  libertad,  camerado,  ma  femme, 
ambulanza,  enfans  d'Adam;  half  understood  fragments  of  mod 
ern  science;  wild  figures  of  speech  from  the  Transcendental 
dreamers  which  he  took  literally  and  pushed  to  their  logical  limit. 


170  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

And  he  poured  it  all  out  in  a  melange  without  coherence  or  logical 
sequence:  poetry  and  slang,  bravado  and  egotism,  trash  and  di 
vinity  and  dirt.  At  one  moment  he  sings: 

Smile,  0  voluptuous,  cool-breathed  Earth! 

Earth  of  the  slumbering  and  liquid  trees! 

Earth  of  departed  sunset!     Earth  of  the  mountains,  misty-topt! 

Earth  of  tin-  vitreous  pour  of  the  full  moon,  just  tinged  with  blue! 

Earth  of  shine  and  dark,  mottling  the  tide  of  the  river! 

Kartli  of  the  limpid  gray  of  clouds,  brighter  and  clearer  for  my  sake! 

Far-swooping  elbowed   Earth!     Rich,  apple-blossomed  Earth! 

Smile,  for  Your  Lover  comes! 

And  the  next  moment  be  bursts  out: 

Karth!  you  seem  to  look  for  something  at  my  hands, 
Say,  old  Top-knot!  what  do  you  want? 

And  he  does  it  all  honestly,  unsmilingly,  and  ignorantly.  It  is 
because  he  had  so  small  a  horizon  that  he  seems  so  to  project  be 
yond  the  horizon.  To  understand  him  one  must  understand  first 
his  ignorance. 

But  if  he  is  a  savage,  he  has  also  the  vigor  and  dash  and 
abounding  health  of  the  savage.  He  enters  upon  his  work  with 
unction  and  perfect  abandonment;  his  lines  shout  and  rush  and 
set  the  blood  of  his  reader  thrilling  like  a  series  of  war  whoops. 
His  first  poem,  the  ' '  Proto-Leaf , "  is,  to  say  the  least,  exhilarating. 
Read  straight  through  aloud  with  resonant  voice,  it  arouses  in 
the  reader  a  strange  kind  of  excitement.  The  author  of  it  was 
young,  in  the  very  tempest  of  perfect  physical  health,  and  he  had 
all  of  the  youth's  eagerness  to  change  the  course  of  things.  His 
work  is  as  much  a  gospel  of  physical  perfection  as  is  Science  and 
Health.  It  is  full  of  the  impetuous  passions  of  youth.  It  is  not 
the  philosophizing  of  an  old  savant,  or  of  an  observer  experi 
enced  in  life,  it  is  the  compelling  arrogance  of  a  young  man  in 
full  blood,  sure  of  himself,  eager  to  reform  the  universe.  The 
poems  indeed  are 

Health  chants — joy  chants — robust  chants  of  young  men. 

The  physical  as  yet  is  supreme.  Of  the  higher  laws  of  sacrifice, 
of  self-effacement,  of  character  that  builds  its  own  aristocracy  and 
draws  lines  through  even  the  most  democratic  mass,  the  poet 
knows  really  nothing.  He  may  talk,  but  as  yet  it  is  talk  without 
basis  of  experience. 


WALT  WHITMAN  171 

The  poems  are  youthful  in  still  another  way:  they  are  of  the 
young  soil  of  America;  they  are  American  absolutely,  in  spirit, 
in  color,  in  outlook.  Like  Thoreau,  Whitman  never  had  all  his 
life  long  any  desire  to  visit  any  other  land  than  his  own.  He 
was  obsessed,  intoxicated,  with  America.  He  began  his  reckon 
ing  of  time  with  the  year  1775  and  dated  his  first  book  "the  year 
80  of  the  States."  A  large  section  of  his  poems  is  taken  up  with 
loving  parti cularization  of  the  land — not  of  New  England  and 
New  York  alone,  but  of  the  whole  of  it,  every  nook  and  corner 
of  it.  For  the  first  time  America  had  a  poet  who  was  as  broad 
as  her  whole  extent  and  who  could  dwell  lovingly  on  every  river 
and  mountain  and  village  from  Atlantic  to  Pacific. 

Take  my  leaves,  America! 

Make  welcome  for  them  everywhere,  for  they  are  your  own  offspring. 

Surround  them.  East  and  West! 

He  glories  in  the  heroic  deeds  of  America,  the  sea  fight  of  John 
Paul  Jones,  the  defense  of  the  Alamo,  and  his  characterization 
of  the  various  sections  of  the  land  thrills  one  and  exhilarates  one 
like  a  glimpse  of  the  flag.  What  a  spread,  continent-wide,  free- 
aired  and  vast — "Far  breath 'd  land,  Arctic  braced!  Mexican 
breezed!" — one  gets  in  the  crescendo  beginning: 

0  the  lands! 

Lands   scorning   invaders!     Interlinked,    food-yielding   lands! 

It  is  the  first  all  American  thrill  in  our  literature. 

The  new  literary  form  adopted  by  Whitman  was  not  a  delib 
erate  and  studied  revolt  from  the  conventional  forms  of  the 
times:  it  was  rather  a  discovery  of  Walt  Whitman  by  himself. 
Style  is  the  man:  the  "easily  written,  loose-fingered  chords" 
of  his  chant,  unrimed,  lawless ;  this  was  Whitman  himself.  How 
he  found  it  or  when  he  found  it,  matters  not  greatly.  It  is  possi 
ble  that  he  got  a  hint  from  his  reading  of  Ossian  or  of  the  Bible 
or  of  Eastern  literature,  but  we  know  that  at  the  end  it  came 
spontaneously.  He  was  too  indolent  to  elaborate  for  himself 
a  deliberate  metrical  system,  he  was  too  lawless  of  soul  to  be 
bound  by  the  old  prosody.  Whatever  he  wrote  must  loaf  along 
with,  perfect  freedom,  unpolished,  haphazard,  incoherent.  The 
adjective  that  best  describes  his  style  is  loose — not  logical,  ram 
bling,  suggestive.  His  mind  saunters  everywhither  and  does  not 


172  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

concentrate.  In  other  words,  it  is  an  uneducated  mind,  an  un 
focused  mind,  a  primitive  mind. 

The  result  was  that,  despite  Whitman's  freshness  and  force 
and  stirring  Americanism,  he  made  little  impression  in  the  decade 
following  the  first  Leaves  of  Grass.  Emerson's  commendation 
of  him  had  been  caused  by  his  originality  and  his  uncouth  power, 
but  none  of  the  others  of  the  mid-century  school  could  see  any 
thing  in  the  poems  save  vulgarity  and  egotistic  posing.  Lowell 
from  first  to  last  viewed  him  with  aversion ;  Whittier  burned  the 
book  at  once  as  a  nasty  thing  that  had  soiled  him.  The  school 
of  Keats  and  Tennyson,  of  Longfellow  and  Willis,  ruled  Amer 
ican  literature  with  tyrannic  power,  and  it  was  too  early  for 
successful  revolution. 

Ill 

The  Civil  War  found  Whitman  young;  it  left  him  an  old 
man.  There  seems  to  have  been  no  midde-age  period  in  his 
life.  He  had  matured  with  slowness;  at  forty,  when  he  issued 
the  1860  Leaves  of  Grass,  he  was  in  the  very  prime  of  youth, 
the  physical  still  central.  There  had  been  no  suffering  in  his 
life,  no  grip  of  experience;  he  spoke  much  of  the  soul,  but  the 
soul  was  still  of  secondary  importance.  He  wrote  to  his  mother 
in  1862: 

I  believe  I  weigh  about  two  hundred,  and  as  to  my  face  (so  scarlet) 
and  my  beard  and  neck,  they  are  terrible  to  behold.  I  fancy  the  reason 
I  am  able  to  do  some  good  in  the  hospitals  among  the  poor  languishing1 
and  wounded  boys,  is  that  I  am  so  large  and  well — indeed  like  a  great 
wild  buffalo,  with  much  hair.  Many  of  the  soldiers  are  from  the  \\Y-t. 
and  far  North,  and  they  take  to  a  man  that  has  not  the  bleached,  shiny 
and  shaven  cut  of  the  cities  and  the  East.8 

The  world  of  the  1860  Leaves  of  Grass  is  a  world  as  viewed  by  a 
perfectly  healthy  young  man,  who  has  had  his  way  to  the  full. 
The  appeal  of  it  is  physiological  rather  than  spiritual.  It  ends 
the  first  period  of  Whitman 's  poetical  life. 

His  next  book,  Drum-Taps,  came  in  1866.  Between  the  two 
had  come  the  hospital  experience  of  1862-1865,  from  which  had 
emerged  the  Whitman  of  the  later  period. 

He  had  been  drawn  into  this  hospital  experience,  as  into  every 
thing  else  in  his  life,  almost  by  accident.  It  had  come  to  him 

*  The   Wound- Dresser. 


WALT  WHITMAN  173 

after  no  hard-fought  battle  with  himself;  it  was  the  result  of 
no  compelling  convictions.  The  war  had  progressed  for  a  year 
before  it  assumed  concrete  proportions  for  him.  It  required  the 
news  that  his  brother  was  lying  desperately  wounded  at  Fred- 
ericksburg  to  move  his  imagination.  When  he  had  arrived  at 
the  front  and  had  found  his  brother  in  no  serious  condition  after 
all,  he  had  drifted  almost  by  accident  into  the  misery  of  the 
ambulance  trains  and  the  hospitals,  and  before  he  had  realized 
it,  he  was  in  the  midst  of  the  army  nurses,  working  as  if  he  had 
volunteered  for  the  service.  And  thus  he  had  drifted  on  to  the 
end  of  the  war,  a  self-appointed  hospital  worker,  touching  and 
helping  thousands  of  sinking  lives. 

And  he  gave  during  those  three  years  not  only  his  youth  but 
also  his  health  of  body.  He  was  weakened  at  length  with  ma 
laria  and  infected  with  blood  poisoning  from  a  wound  that  he  had 
dressed.  Moreover,  the  experience  drained  him  on  the  side  of  his 
emotions  and  his  nervous  vitality  until  he  went  home  to  become 
at  last  paralytic  and  neurotic.  The  strain  upon  him  he  has  de 
scribed  with  a  realism  that  unnerves  one : 

I  dress  the  perforated  shoulder,  the  foot  with  the  bullet-wound, 
Cleanse  the  one  with  a  gnawing  and  putrid  gangrene,  so  sickening,  so 

offensive, 

While  the  attendant  stands  beside  me  holding  the  tray  and  pail. 
I  am  faithful,  I  do  not  give  out, 

The  fractur'd  thigh,  the  knee,  the  wound  in  the  abdomen, 
These  and  more  I  dress  with  impassive  hand  (yet  deep  in  my  breast  a 

fire,  a  burning  flame). 

The  war  allowed  Whitman  to  put  into  practice  all  his  young 
manhood's  dream  of  saviorship.  It  turned  him  from  a  preacher 
into  a  prophet  and  a  man  of  action,  one  who  took  his  earlier  mes 
sage  and  illustrated  it  at  every  point  with  works.  It  awakened 
within  him  a  new  ideal  of  life.  He  had  been  dealing  heretofore 
with  words: 

Words !  book- words !     What  are  you  ? 

Words  no  more,  for  harken  and  see, 

My  song  is  there  in  the  open  air,  and  I  must  sing, 

With  the  banner  and  pennant  a-flapping. 

No  longer  does  he  exult  in  his  mere  physical  body.  Lines  like 
these  he  now  edits  from  his  early  editions : 

How  dare  a  sick  man,  or  an  obedient  man,  write  poems  for  these  States'? 


174  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Also  lines  like  these : 

0  to  be  relieved  of  distinctions!  to  make  as  much  of  vices  as  virtues! 
0  to  level  occupations  and  the  sexes!     0  to  bring  all  to  common  ground ! 
0  adhesiveness! 

0  the  pensive  aching  to  be  together, — you  know  not  why,  and  I  know 

not  why. 

He  omits  everywhere  freely  now  from  the  early  editions,  not 
from  the  " Children  of  Adam,"  however,  though  Emerson  ad 
vised  it  with  earnestness.  The  Whitmans  were  an  obstinate  race. 
"As  obstinate  as  a  Whitman,"  had  been  a  degree  of  compari 
son  ;  and  here  was  one  of  them  who  had  taken  a  position  before 
the  world  and  had  maintained  it  in  the  face  of  persecution.  Re 
treat  would  be  impossible ;  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  he  wrote  no 
more  poems  of  sex  and  that  he  put  forth  no  more  of  his  tall  talk 
and  braggadocio.  Swiftly  he  had  become  the  poet  of  the  larger 
life :  the  immaterial  in  man,  the  soul. 

Drum-Taps,  1866,  gives  us  the  first  glimpse  of  this  new  Whit 
man.  The  tremendous  poem, ' '  Rise,  0  Days,  from  Your  Fathom 
less  Deeps,"  marks  the  transition.  In  it  he  declares  that  he  had, 
with  hunger  of  soul,  devoured  only  what  earth  had  given  him, 
that  he  had  sought  to  content  himself  simply  with  nature  and  the 
material  world. 

Yet  there  with  my  soul  I  fed,  I  fed  content,  supercilious. 
He  does  not  condemn  this  earlier  phase  of  his  development : 

'T  was  well,  0  soul — 't  was  a  good  preparation  you  gave  me, 

Now  we  advance  our  latest  and  ampler  hunger  to  fill. 

Now  we  go  forth  to  receive  what  the  earth  and  the  sea  never  gave  us. 

Now  for  the  first  time  he  realizes  the  meaning  of  Democracy,  the 
deep  inner  meaning  of  Man  and  America. 

Long  had  I  walk'd  my  cities,  my  country  roads  through  farms,  only 

half  satisfied, 
One  doubt  nauseous  undulating  like  a  snake,  crawPd  on  the  ground 

before  me, 
Continually  preceding  my  steps,  turning  upon  me  oft,  ironically  hissing 

low; 
The  cities  I  loved  so  well  I  abandoned  and  left,  I  sped  to  the  certainties 

suitable  to  me, 
11  in  mcrinjr,  hungering,   hungering,   for  primal  energies  and   Nature's 

daunt  Icssness, 

1  refreshed  myself  with  it  only,  I  could  relish  it  only, 


WALT  WHITMAN  175 

I  waited  the  bursting  forth  of  the  pent  fire — on  the  water  and  air  I 

waited  long; 

But  now  I  no  longer  wait,  I  am  fully  satisfied,  I  am  glutted, 
I  have  witnessed  the  true  lightning,  I  have  witnessed  my  cities  electric, 
I  have  lived  to  behold  man  burst  forth. 

It  is  the  same  thrill  that  had  aroused  Stedman,  and  made  him 
proud  for  the  first  time  of  his  country.  Henceforth  the  poet  will 
sing  of  Men — men  not  as  magnificent  bodies,  but  as  triumphant 
souls.  Drum-Taps  fairly  quivers  and  sobs  and  shouts  with  a  new 
life.  America  has  risen  at  last — one  feels  it  in  every  line.  The 
book  gives  more  of  the  actual  soul  of  the  great  conflict  and  of  the 
new  spirit  that  arose  from  it  than  any  other  book  ever  written. 
"Come  up  from  the  Fields,  Father,"  tells  with  simple  pathos 
that  chief  tragedy  of  the  war,  the  death  message  brought  to 
parents;  "The  Wound-Dresser"  pictures  with  a  realism  almost 
terrifying  the  horrors  of  the  hospitals  after  a  battle;  "Beat! 
Beat !  Drums  ! ' '  arouses  like  a  bugle  call ;  such  sketches  as  ' '  Cav^ 
airy  Crossing  a  Ford,"  "Bivouac  on  a  Mountain  Side,"  and  "A 
March  in  the  Ranks  Hard-Prest,  and  the  Road  Unknown,"  are 
full  of  the  thrill  and  the  excitement  of  war ;  and  finally  the  poems 
in  "Memories  of  President  Lincoln":  among1  them  "When 
Lilacs  Last  in  the  Dooryard  Bloom 'd,"  "0  Captain!  My  Cap 
tain!"  and  "Hush'd  Be  the  Camps  To-day,"  come  near  to  the 
highest  places  yet  won  by  elegaic  verse  in  English. 

IV 

In  June,  1865,  after  he  had  served  for  a  short  time  as  a  clerk 
in  the  Interior  Department  at  Washington,  Whitman  had  been 
discharged  on  the  ground  that  he  kept  in  his  desk  an  indecent 
book  of  which  he  was  the  author.  As  a  result  of  the  episode,  W. 
D.  O'Connor,  an  impetuous  young  journalist,  published  in  Sep 
tember  the  same  year  a  pamphlet  entitled  The  Good  Gray  Poet, 
defending  Whitman  as  a  man  incapable  of  grossness  and  hailing 
him  as  a  new  force  in  American  literature.  Despite  its  extrava 
gance  and  its  manifest  special  pleading,  the  little  book  is  a  notable 
one,  a  document  indeed  in  the  history  of  the  new  literary  period. 
It  recognized  that  a  new  era  was  opening,  one  that  was  to  be 
original  and  intensely  American. 

It  [Leaves  of  Grass]  is,  in  the  first  place,  a  work  purely  and  entirely 
American,  autochthonic,  sprung  from  our  own  soil ;  no  savor  of  Europe 


176  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

nor  of  the  past,  nor  of  any  other  literature  in  it;  a  vast  carol  of  our 
own  land,  and  of  its  Present  and  Future ;  the  strong  and  haughty  psalra 
of  the  Republic.  There  is  not  one  other  book,  I  care  not  whose,  of 
which  this  can  be  said.  I  weigh  my  words  and  have  considered  well. 
Every  other  book  by  an  American  author  implies,  both  in  form  and 
substance,  I  cannot  even  say  the  European,  but  the  British  mind.  The 
shadow  of  Temple  Bar  and  Arthur's  Seat  lies  dark  on  all  our  letters. 
Intellectually,  we  are  still  a  dependency  of  Great  Britain,  and  one  word 
— colonial — comprehends  and  stamps  our  literature.  ...  At  most,  our 
best  books  were  but  struggling  beams;  behold  in  Leaves  of  Grass  the 
immense  and  absolute  sunrise!  It  is  all  our  own!  The  nation  is  in  it! 
In  form  a  series  of  chants,  in  substance  it  is  an  epic  of  America.  It  is 
distinctly  and  utterly  American.  Without  model,  without  imitation, 
without  reminiscence,  it  is  evolved  entirely  from  our  own  polity  and 
popular  life. 

The  defense  fell  for  the  most  part  on  deaf  ears.  It  had  been 
Whitman's  dream  that  the  great  poet  of  democracy  was  to  be 
the  idol  of  the  common  people,  the  poet  loved  and  read  even  by 
the  illiterate. 

The  woodman  that  takes  his  ax  and  jug  with  him  shall  take  me  with 

him  all  day, 
The  farm-boy,  plowing  in  the  field,  feels  good  at  the  sound  of  my  voice. 

But  the  common  people  heard  him  not  gladly:  they  preferred 
Longfellow.  The  American  average  man — "en  masse " — sees  no 
poetry  in  him.  Moreover,  he  has  been  rejected  very  largely  by 
the  more  educated.  It  has  been  his  curious  experience  to  be 
repudiated  by  democratic  America  and  to  be  accepted  and  hailed 
as  a  prophet  by  the  aristocratic  intellectual  classes  of  England 
and  of  Europe  generally.  Swinburne,  W.  M.  Rossetti,  Symonds, 
Dowden,  Saintsbury,  Tennyson,  and  very  many  others  accepted 
him  early  and  at  full  value,  as  did  also  Frciligrath,  Schmidt, 
and  Bjornson.  A  cult  early  sprang  up  about  him,  one  composed 
largely  of  mystics,  and  revolutionists,  and  reformers  in  all  fields. 

In  1871,  Whitman  issued  what  unquestionably  is  his  most 
notable  prose  work,  Democratic  Vistas.  It  is  pitched  in  major 
key:  it  swells  O'Connor's  piping  note  into  a  trumpet  blast. 
Boldly  and  radically  it  called  for  a  new  school  of  literature. 
The  old  is  outgrown,  it  cried ;  the  new  is  upon  us ;  make  ready 
for  the  great  tide  of  Democratic  poetry  and  prose  that  even  now 
is  sweeping  away  the  old  landmarks. 

To  the  new  era  it  was  what  Emerson's  American  Scholar  was 


WALT  WHITMAN  177 

to  the  period  that  had  opened  in  the  thirties.  It  was  our  last 
great  declaration  of  literary  independence.  Emerson,  the  Har 
vard  scholar,  last  of  a  long  line  of  intellectual  clergymen,  had 
pleaded  for  the  aristocracy  of  literature,  the  American  scholar, 
the  man  thinking  his  own  thoughts,  alone,  the  set-apart  man  of 
his  generation;  Whitman  pleaded  for  the  democracy  of  litera 
ture,  for  an  American  literature  that  was  the  product  of  the 
mass,  a  literature  of  the  people,  for  the  people,  and  by  the  people. 
Emerson  had  spoken  as  an  oracle:  "What  crowded  and  breath 
less  aisles !  What  windows  clustering  with  eager  heads ! ' '  Whit 
man  was  as  one  crying  in  the  wilderness,  uncouth,  unheeded 
save  by  the  few.  Emerson  was  the  clarion  voice  of  Harvard; 
Whitman  was  the  voice  of  the  great  movement  that  so  soon  was 
to  take  away  the  scepter  from  Harvard  and  transfer  it  upon  the 
strong  new  learning  of  the  West.  His  message  was  clear  and  it 
came  with  Carlyle-like  directness: 

Literature,  strictly  considered,  has  never  recognized  the  People,  and, 
Whatever  may  be  said,  does  not  to-day. 

Our  fundamental  want  to-day  in  the  United  States,  with  closest, 
amplest  reference  to  present  conditions,  and  to  the  future,  is  of  a  class, 
and  the  clear  idea  of  a  class,  of  native  authors,  literati,  far  different, 
far  higher  in  grade  than  any  yet  known,  sacerdotal,  modern,  fit  to  cope 
with  our  occasions,  lands,  permeating  the  whole  mass  of  American 
mentality,  taste,  belief,  breathing  into  it  a  new  breath  of  life. 

He  has  this  to  say  of  the  poets  who  thus  far  had  voiced 
America : 

Touched  by  the  national  test,  or  tried  by  the  standards  of  democratic 
personality,  they  wither  to  ashes.  I  say  I  have  not  seen  a  single  writer, 
artist,  lecturer,  or  what-not,  that  has  confronted  the  voiceless  but  ever 
erect  and  active,  pervading,  underlying  will  and  typic  aspiration  of  the 
land,  in  a  spirit  kindred  to  itself.  Do  you  call  these  genteel  little  crea 
tures  American  poets'?  Do  you  term  that  perpetual,  pistareen,  paste- 
pot  work,  American  art,  American  drama,  taste,  verse?  I  think  I  hear, 
echoed  as  from  some  mountaintop  afar  in  the  west,  the  scornful  laugh 
of  the  Genius  of  these  States. 

America  has  not  been  free.  She  has  echoed  books;  she  has 
looked  too  earnestly  to  the  East. 

America  has  yet  morally  and  artistically  originated  nothing.  She 
seems  singularly  unaware  that  the  models  of  persons,  books,  manners, 
&c.,  appropriate  for  former  conditions  and  for  European  lands,  are 
but  exiles  and  exotics  here. 


178  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Our  literature  must  be  American  in  spirit  and  in  background, 
and  only  American. 

"What  is  the  reason  our  time,  our  lands,  that  we  see  no  fresh  local 
courage,  sanity,  of  our  own — the  Mississippi,  stalwart  Western  men, 
real  mental  and  physical  facts.  Southerners,  &c.,  in  the  body  of  our 
literature?  especially  the  poetic  part  of  it.  But  always  instead,  a 
parcel  of  dandies  and  ennuyes,  dapper  little  gentlemen  from  abroad, 
who  flood  us  with  their  thin  sentiment  of  parlors,  parasols,  piano-songs, 
tinkling  rimes,  the  five-hundredth  importation — or  whimpering  and 
crying  about  something,  chasing  one  aborted  conceit  after  another,  and 
forever  occupied  in  dyspeptic  amours  with  dyspeptic  women.  While, 
current  and  novel,  the  grandest  events  and  revolutions,  and  stormiest 
passions  of  history,  are  crossing  to-day  with  unparalleled  rapidity  and 
magnificence  over  the  stages  of  our  own  and  all  the  continents,  offering 
new  materials,  opening  new  vistas,  with  largest  needs,  inviting  the 
daring  launching  forth  of  conceptions  in  literature,  inspired  by  them, 
soaring  in  highest  regions,  serving  art  in  its  highest. 

America  demands  a  poetry  that  is  bold,  modern,  and  all-surrounding 
and  kosmical,  as  she  is  herself.  It  must  in  no  respect  ignore  science  or 
the  modern,  but  inspire  itself  with  science  and  the  modern.  It  must 
bend  its  vision  toward  the  future,  more  than  the  past.  Lake  America, 
it  must  extricate  itself  from  even  the  greatest  models  of  the  past,  and, 
while  courteous  to  them,  must  have  entire  faith  in  itself,  and  the  prod 
ucts  of  its  own  democratic  spirit  only. 

Faith,  very  old,  now  scared  away  by  science,  must  be  restored,  brought 
back  by  the  same  power  that  caused  her  departure — restored  with  new 
sway,  deeper,  wider,  higher  than  ever.  Surely,  this  universal  ennui, 
this  coward  fear,  this  shuddering  at  death,  these  low,  degrading  views, 
are  not  always  to  rule  the  spirit  pervading  future  s)ciety,  as  it  has  in 
the  past,  and  does  the  present. 

The  book  came  winged  with  a  double  message:  it  was  a  de 
fense  and  an  explanation  of  Walt  Whitman,  the  poet  of  democ 
racy,  and  it  was  the  call  for  a  new  era  in  American  literature. 
In  both  aspects  it  was  notable,  notable  as  Wordsworth's  early 
prefaces  were  notable.  It  was  both  an  effect  and  a  cause.  The 
same  impulse  that  launched  it  launched  also  Thoreau  and  the 
nature  school,  Bret  Harte  and  the  Pike  County  balladists,  Mark 
Twain  and  the  vulgarians,  Howells  and  realism,  and  all  the 
great  wave  of  literature  of  locality.  Its  effect  and  the  effect  of 
Leaves  of  Grass  that  went  with  it  has  been  a  marked  one.  After 
tlu-se  two  books  there  could  be  no  more  dilettanteism  in  art,  no 
more  art  for  mere  art's  sake,  no  more  imitation  and  subservience 
to  foreign  masters ;  the  time  had  come  for  a  literature  that  was 


WALT  WHITMAN  179 

genuine  and  compelling,  one  that  was  American  both  in  message 
and  in  spirit. 


1871  was  the  culminating  year  of  Whitman's  literary  life. 
He  was  at  the  fullness  of  his  powers.  His  final  attack  of  paralysis 
was  as  yet  a  year  away.  For  the  exhibition  of  the  American 
Institute  he  put  the  message  of  Democratic  Vistas  into  poetic 
form — "After  All,  not  to  Create  Only" — a  glorious  invitation 
to  the  muses  to  migrate  to  America: 

Placard  "Remov'd"  and  "To  Let"  on  the  rocks  of  your  snowy  Parnassus, 
a  perfect  hexameter  line  it  will  be  noted,  as  also  this : 
Ended,  deceased  through  time,  her  voice  by  Castaly's  fountain. 

And  the  same  year  he  put  forth  an  enlarged  and  enriched  Leaves 
of  Grass,  including  in  it  the  splendid  " Passage  to  India,"  cele 
brating  the  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal,  a  poem  that  is  larger 
than  the  mere  geographic  bounds  of  its  subject,  world- wide  as 
they  were,  for  it  is  a  poem  universe-wide,  celebrating  the  tri 
umphs  of  the  human  soul. 

We  too  take  ship,  0  soul, 

Joyous  we  too  launch  out  on  trackless  seas, 

Fearless  for  unknown  shores  on  waves  of  ecstasy  to  sail, 

Amid  the  wafting  winds  (thou  pressing  me  to  thee,  I  thee  to  me,  0  soul), 

Caroling  free,  singing  our  song  of  God. 

Passage  to  more  than  India! 

Are  thy  wings  plumed  indeed  for  such  far  flights? 

0  soul,  voyagest  thou  indeed  on  voyages  like  those? 

Disportest  thou  on  waters  such  as  those? 

Soundest  below  the  Sanscrit  and  the  Vedas? 

Then  have  thy  bent  unleashed. 

The  poems  grouped  around  this  splendid  outburst,  as  indeed 
all  the  rest  of  his  poems  until  illness  and  age  began  to  dim  his 
powers,  are  pitched  in  this  major  key.  No  poet  in  any  time  ever 
maintained  himself  longer  at  such  high  levels.  His  poems  which 
he  entitled  ''Whispers  of  Heavenly  Death,"  are  all  of  the  upper 
air  and  the  glory  of  the  released  soul  of  man.  Not  even  Shelley 
has  more  of  lyric  abandon  and  pure  joy  than  Whitman  in  such 
songs  as  ''Barest  Thou  Now,  O  Soul": 


180  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Then  we  burst  forth,  we  float, 

In  Time  and  Space,  0  soul,  prepared  for  them, 

Equal,  equipt  at  last  (0  joy!  0  fruit  of  all!)  them  to  fulfil,  0  soul. 

And  what  deeps  and  abysses  in  a  lyric  like  this : 

A  noiseless  patient  spider, 

I  mark'd  where  on  a  little  promontory  it  stood  isolated, 

Mark'd  how  to  explore  the  vacant  vast  surrounding, 

It'  launch'd  forth  filament,  filament,  filament,  out  of  itself, 

Ever  unreeling  them,  ever  tirelessly  speeding  them. 

And  you,  0  my  soul,  where  you  stand, 
Surrounded,  detached,  in  measureless  oceans  of  space, 
Ceaselessly  musing,  venturing,  throwing,  seeking  the  spheres  to  con 
nect  them, 

Till  the  bridge  you  will  need  be  form'd,  till  the  ductile  anchor  hold, 
Till  the  gossamer  thread  you  fling  catch  somewhere,  0  my  soul ! 

And  then  at  last,  paralyzed  and  helpless,  his  work  done,  the  body 
he  had  gloried  in  slipping  away  from  him,  there  came  that  mag 
nificent  outburst  of  faith  and  optimism  that  throws  a  glory  over 
the  whole  of  American  poetry,  the  "Prayer  of  Columbus": 

My  terminus  near, 

The  clouds  already  closing  in  upon  me, 

The  voyage  balk'd,  the  course  disputed,  lost, 

I  yield  my  ships  to  Thee. 

My  hands,  my  limbs  grow  nerveless, 

My  brain  feels  rack'd,  bewildered, 

Let  the  old  timbers  part,  I  will  not  part, 

I  will  cling  fast  to  Thee,  0  God,  though  the  waves 

buffet  me, 
Thee,  Thee  at  least  I  know. 

Sometime  the  poems  of  Whitman  will  be  arranged  in  the  order 
in  which  he  wrote  them,  and  then  it  will  be  seen  that  the  poems 
by  which  he  is  chiefly  judged — the  chants  of  the  body,  the  long 
catalogues  of  things  (reduced  greatly  by  the  poet  in  his  later 
editings),  the  barbaric  yawp  and  the  egotism — belong  to  only 
one  brief  period  in  his  literary  development;  that  in  his  later 
work  he  was  the  poet  of  the  larger  life  of  man,  the  most  positive 
singer  of  the  human  soul  in  the  whole  range  of  English  litera 
ture.  If  the  earlier  Whitman  is  the  singer  of  a  type  of  democ 
racy  that  does  not  exist  in  America  except  as  an  abstract  theory, 
the  later  Whitman  is  the  singer  of  the  universal  heart  of  man. 


WALT  WHITMAN  181 

The  Whitman  that  will  endure  emerged  from  the  furnace  of  the 
Civil  War.     In  his  own  words : 

Without  those  three  or  four  years  and  the  experiences  they  gave, 
Leaves  of  Grass  would  not  now  be  existing.5 

And  again, 

I  know  very  well  that  my  "Leaves"  could  not  possibly  have  emerged 
or  been  fashion'd  or  completed,  from  any  other  era  than  the  latter  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  nor  any  other  land  than  democratic  America, 
and  from  the  absolute  triumph  of  the  national  Union  arms.6 

He  is  not  always  easy  reading;  he  is  not  always  consecutive 
and  logical.  He  said  himself  that  the  key  to  his  style  was  sug- 
gestiveness. 

I  round  and  finish  little,  if  anything;  and  could  not,  consistently 
with  my  scheme.  The  reader  will  always  have  his  or  her  part  to  do, 
just  as  much  as  I  have  had  mine.  I  seek  less  to  state  or  display  any 
theme  or  thought,  and  more  to  bring  you,  reader,  into  the  atmosphere 
of  the  theme  or  thought — there  to  pursue  your  own  flight. 

He  is  oracular ;  he  talks  darkly,  like  the  priestess  in  the  temple, 
in  snatches  and  Orphic  ejaculations,  and  we  listen  with  eagerness. 
Had  he  been  as  clear  and  as  consecutive  as  Longfellow  he  would 
not  have  had  at  all  the  vogue  that  has  been  his.  Somehow  he  gives 
the  impression  constantly  to  his  reader,  as  he  gave  it  in  earlier 
years  to  Thoreau,  that  there  is  something  superhuman  about  him. 
He  is  a  misty  landscape  illuminated  by  lightning  flashes.  We 
feel  that  we  are  near  lofty  mountains;  now  and  then  we  catch 
glimpses  of  a  snowy  peak,  but  only  for  a  moment.  The  fitful  roll 
of  the  thunder  excites  us  and  the  flashes  sometimes  terrify,  and 
the  whole  effect  of  the  experience  is  on  the  side  of  the  feelings. 
There  is  little  clear  vision.  Or,  perhaps,  a  better  figure :  taking 
his  entire  work  we  have  the  great  refuse  heap  ol  the  universe. 
He  shows  it  to  us  with  eagerness ;  nothing  disgusts  him,  nothing 
disconcerts  him.  Now  he  pulls  forth  a  diamond,  now  a  potsherd, 
and  he  insists  that  both  are  equally  valuable.  He  is  joyous  at 
every  return  of  the  grappling  hook.  Are  not  all  together  in  the 
heap;  shall  the  diamond  say  to  the  potsherd,  I  am  better  than 
thou? 

B  November  Boughs. 

6.4.  Backward  Glance  o'er  Travel'd  Roads. 


182  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

He  was  early  touched  by  the  nature  movement  of  the  mid  cen- 
tury.  With  half  a  dozen  poems  he  has  made  himself  the  leading 
American  poet  of  the  sea.  In  all  of  his  earlier  work  there 
breathes  the  spirit  of  the  living  out-of-doors  until  he  may  be 
ranked  with  Thoreau  and  Muir  and  Burroughs.  It  was  the 
opinion  of  Burroughs  that  "No  American  poet  has  studied  Ameri 
can  nature  more  closely  than  Whitman,  or  is  more  cautious  in 
his  uses  of  it."  He  is  not  the  poet  of  the  drawing-room — he  is 
the  poet  of  the  vast  sweep  of  the  square  miles,  of  the  open  sky,  of 
the  cosmos.  ' '  Democracy  most  of  all  affiliates  with  the  open  air, ' ' 
he  contended ;  "is  sunny  and  hardy  and  sane  only  with  Nature — 
just  as  much  as  art  is."  And  it  was  his  mission,  as  he  conceived 
it,  "to  bring  people  back  from  their  persistent  strayings  and 
sickly  abstractions,  to  the  costless  average,  divine,  original  con 
crete." 

He  is  not  a  scientist  with  Nature ;  he  does  not  know  enough  to 
be  a  scientist,  and  his  methods  and  cast  of  mind  are  hopelessly 
unscientific.  He  is  simply  a  man  who  feels. 

You  must  not  know  too  much,  or  be  too  precise  or  scientific  about 
birds  and  trees  and  flowers  and  water  craft ;  a  certain  free  margin,  and 
even  vagueness — perhaps  ignorance,  credulity — helps  your  enjoyment 
of  these  things,  and  of  the  sentiment  of  feathered,  wooded,  river,  or 
marine  nature  generally.  I  repeat  it — don't  want  to  know  too  exactly, 
or  the  reasons  why. 

Such  a  paragraph  is  worth  a  chapter  of  analysis,  and  so  also 
is  a  poem  like  this : 

When  I  heard  the  learn'd  astronomer, 

When  the  proofs,  the  figures,  were  ranged  in  columns  before  me, 

When  I  was  shown  the  charts  and  diagrams,  to  add,  divide,  and  meas 
ure  them, 

When  I  sitting  heard  the  astronomer  where  he  lectured  with  much 
applause  in  the  lecture-room, 

How  soon  unaccountable  I  became  tired  and  sick, 

Till  rising  and  gliding  out  I  wanderM  off  by  myself, 

In  the  mystical  moist  night  air,  and  from  time  to  time, 

Look'd  up  in  perfect  silence  at  the  stars. 

His  intellect  is  not  so  developed  as  his  emotions.  He  cannot 
think ;  he  can  feel.  And  after  all  is  not  the  essence  of  all  poetry, 
of  all  the  meanings  of  life,  of  the  soul,  of  Nature  in  its  message 
to  man,  a  thing  not  of  the  intellect  but  of  the  sensitive  spirit  of 
man? 


WALT  WHITMAN  183 


VI 

Of  Whitman's  poetic  form  there  is  still  much  to  learn.  In  its 
earlier  phases  there  was  a  sprawliness  about  it  that  at  times  was 
almost  fatal  to  poetic  effects,  but  he  grew  more  metric  with  every 
edition  and  more  and  more  pruned  out  the  worst  of  his  lines,  such 
for  instance  as  this : 

Or,  another  time,  in  warm  weather,  out  in  a  boat,  to  lift  the  lobster- 
pots,  where  they  are  sunk  with  heavy  stones  (I  know  the  buoys). 

His  lines  are  not  prose,  even  the  worst  of  them.  There  is  a  roll 
about  them,  a  falling  of  the  voice  at  stressed  intervals,  an  alternate 
time-beat,  crude  at  times,  violated  often,  yet  nevertheless  an 
obedience  to  law. 

It  is  impossible  for  any  poet,  however  lawless  and  apathetic 
to  rules,  to  compose  year  after  year  without  at  last  falling  into  a 
stereotyped  habit  of  manner,  and  evolving  a  metric  roll  that  is 
second  nature.  That  Whitman  was  not  conscious  of  any  metric 
law  within  himself  goes  without  saying.  He  believed  that  he  was 
as  free  as  the  tides  of  the  ocean  and  the  waves  that  rolled  among 
the  rocks — lawless,  unconfined. 

I  have  not  only  not  bother*  d  much  about  style,  form,  art,  etc.,  but  I 
confess  to  more  or  less  apathy  (I  believe  I  have  sometimes  caught  my 
self  in  decided  aversion)  toward  them  throughout,  asking  nothing  of 
them  but  negative  advantages — that  they  should  never  impede  me,  and 
never  under  any  circumstances,  or  for  their  own  purposes  only,  assume 
any  mastery  over  me.7 

But  a  study  of  Whitman  reveals  the  fact  that  certain  laws  did 
more  and  more  assume  mastery  over  him.  With  every  year  the 
time-beat  of  his  poems  grew  increasingly  hexametric.  One  may 
go  through  his  later  poems  and  find  on  the  average  a  full  hex 
ameter  line  on  every  page.  I  quote  at  random : 

To  the  cities  and  farms  I  sing  as  they  spread  in  the  sunshine  before  me. 
How  shall  the  young  man  know  the  whether  and  when  of  his  brother? 
Behold  thy  fields  and  farms,  thy  far-off  woods  and  mountains. 

His  ear  unconsciously  seemed  to  demand  the  roll  of  the  dactyl, 
then  a  cesura  after  from  five  to  seven  beats,  then  a  closing  roll 

7  Preface  to  Good-by  My  Fancy. 


184  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

longer  or  shorter  as  his  mood  struck  him.  The  greater  number 
of  his  later  lines  open  as  if  the  line  was  to  be  a  hexameter :  * '  Over 
the  breast  of  the  spring/'  " Passing  the  yellow-spear 'd  wheat, " 
"Passing  the  apple  tree  blows/'  "Coffin  that  passes  through 
lakes/'  and  so  on  and  on. 

But  one  can  make  a  broader  statement.  The  total  effect  of  the 
poems  after  1870,  like  the  "Song  of  the  Redwood,"  for  instance, 
is  hexametric,  though  few  of  the  lines  may  be  hexameters  as  they 
stand.  One  might  arrange  this  song  like  this : 

A  California  song,  |  a  prophecy  and  indirection, 

A  thought  impalpable  |  to  breathe  as  air,  a  chorus 

Of  dryads,  fading  departing.  |  or  hamadryads  departing, 

A  murmuring,  fateful  giant  f  voice  out  of  the  earth  and  sky, 

Voice  of  a  mighty  dying  |  tree  in  the  redwood  forest 

Dense.     Farewell  my  brethren,  |  Farewell  0  earth  and  sky, 

Farewell  ye  neighboring  waters,  |  my  time  has  ended,  my  term 

Has  come  along  the  northern  coast  |  just  back  from  the  rockbound  shore, 

And  the  caves  in  the  saline  air  |  from  the  sea  in  the  Mendocino 

Country  with  the  surge  for  base  |  and  accompaniment  low  and  hoarse, 

With  crackling  blows  of  axes  |  sounding  musically  driven 

By  strong  arms  driven  deep  |  by  the  sharp  tong-ues  of  the  axes, 

There  in  the  redwood  forest  |  dense  I  heard  the  mighty 

Tree  in  its  death  chant  chanting. 

Crude  hexameters  these  undoubtedly,  requiring  much  wrenching 
and  eliding  at  times,  yet  for  all  that  as  one  reads  them  aloud  one 
cannot  escape  the  impression  that  the  total  effect  is  hexametric. 
May  it  not  be  that  the  primal  time  beat  for  poetry  is  the  hex 
ameter,  and  that  the  prehistoric  poets  evolved  it  spontaneously 
even  as  the  creator  of  Leaves  of  Grass  evolved  it  ? 

VII 

To  insist  that  Whitman  has  had  small  influence  on  later  poetry 
because  none  of  the  later  poets  has  made  use  of  his  chant  is  feeble 
criticism.  No  poet  even  can  make  use  of  his  verse  form  without 
plagiarism,  for  his  loose-fingered  chords  and  his  peculiar  time- 
beat,  his  line-lengths,  his  wrenched  hexameters — all  this  was 
Whitman  himself.  In  all  other  ways  he  enormously  influenced 
his  age.  His  realism,  his  concrete  pictures,  his  swing  and  free 
dom,  his  Americanism,  his  insistence  upon  message,  ethic  pur 
pose,  absolute  fidelity  to  the  here  &nd  now  rather  than  to  books 
of  the  past — all  have  been  enormously  influential,  lie  is  the 


WALT  WHITMAN  185 

central  figure  of  the  later  period,  the  voice  in  the  wilderness  that 
hailed  its  dim  morning  and  the  strong  singer  of  its  high  noon. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

WALT  WHITMAN.  (1819-1892.)  During  the  lifetime  of  the  poet  there 
were  issued  ten  editions  of  Leaves  of  Grass,  with  the  following  dates: 
1855,  1856,  1860,  1867,  1871,  1876,  1881,  1888,  1889,  1891. 

Among  his  other  publications  were  the  following:  1866.  Drum-Taps; 
1870.  Passage  to  India;  1871.  Democratic  Vistas;  1875.  Memoranda 
During  the  War;  1876.  Specimen  Days  and  Collect;  1876.  Two  Riv 
ulets;  1888.  November  Boughs;  1891.  Good  Bye  My  Fancy. 

Among  the  works  published  after  his  death  the  most  important  are: 
1897.  Calamus:  a  Series  of  Letters  Written  During  the  Years  1868-1880 
to  a  Young  Friend.  Edited  by  R.  M.  Bucke;  1898.  The  Wound  Dresser: 
Letters  Written  from  the  Hospitals  in  Washington  During  the  War  of  the 
Rebellion.  Edited  by  R.  M.  Bucke;  1904.  Diary  in  Canada.  Edited  by 
W.  S.  Kennedy;  1910.  Complete  Prose  Works,  10  vols.  with  biographical 
matter  by  O.  L.  Triggs,  1902;  Poems,  with  biographical  introduction  by 
John  Burroughs,  1902. 

Among  the  great  mass  of  biographies  and  studies  may  be  mentioned  the 
following:  The  Good  Gray  Poet,  W.  D.  O'Connor,  1865;  Notes  on  Walt 
Whitman  as  Poet  and  Person,  John  Burroughs,  1867;  Whitman:  a,  Study, 
John  Burroughs,  1893;  In  Re  Walt  Whitman,  R.  M.  Bucke,  H.  Traubel, 
and  T.  B.  Harned,  1893;  Walt  Whitman,  the  Man,  T.  Donaldson,  1896; 
"Walt  Whitman:  a  Study,  J.  Addington  Symonds,  1897;  Walt  Whitman 
(the  Camden  Sage)  as  Religious  and  Moral  Teacher:  a  Study,  W.  Norman 
Guthrie,  1897;  Anne  Gilchrist  and  Walt  Whitman,  E.  P.  Gould,  1900; 
Walt  Whitman's  Poetry,  E.  G.  Holmes,  1901;  Walt  Whitman  the  Poet  of 
the  Wider  Selfhood,  M.  T.  Maynard,  1903;  Walt  Whitman,  J.  Platt,  1904; 
A  Life  of  Walt  Whitman,  Henry  B.  Binns,  1905;  A  Vagabond  in  Litera 
ture,  A.  Rickett,  1906;  Walt  Whitman;  His  Life  and  Works,  Bliss  Perry, 
1906;  Days  with  Walt  Whitman.  With  Some  Notes  on  His  Life  and  Work, 
Edward  Carpenter,  1906;  With  Walt  Whitman  in  Camden  (March  28- 
July  IJf,  1880),  Horace  Traubel,  1906;  Walt  Whitman.  English  Men  of 
Letters  Series.  George  Rice  Carpenter,  1909;  Approach  to  Walt  Whitman, 
C.  E.  Noyes,  1910;  Democracy  and  Poetry,  F.  B.  Gummere,  1911;  Walt 
Whitman,  Basil  de  Selincourt,  1914.  A  bibliography  of  Whitman's  writings 
is  appended  to  0.  L.  Triggs's  Selections,  1898. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   CLASSICAL,  REACTION 

The  nineteenth  century  both  in  Europe  and  America  was  a 
period  of  revolt,  of  breakings  away  from  tradition,  of  voices  in 
the  wilderness.  It  was  the  age  of  Byron  and  Shelley,  of  Carlyle 
and  Tolstoy,  of  Heine  and  Hugo.  Literature  came  everywhere 
as  the  voice  of  revolution.  It  rang  with  protest — Dickens  and 
George  Eliot,  Kingsley,  Whittier,  and  Mrs.  Stowe;  it  dreamed 
of  a  new  social  era — Fourier  and  the  sons  of  Rousseau  in  France, 
the  Transcendentalists  in  America;  it  let  itself  go  in  romantic 
abandon  and  brought  back  in  a  flood  feeling  and  sentiment — 
the  spdtromantiker  and  Bulwer-Lytton  and  Longfellow.  Every 
where  conviction,  intensity,  travail  of  soul. 

The  school  died  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  consumed  of 
its  own  impetuous  spirit,  and  it  left  no  heirs.  A  feminine  age 
had  come,  an  age  of  convention  and  of  retrospect.  The  romantic 
gave  way  to  the  inevitable  classic ;  the  hot  passion  of  revolt  to  the 
cool  fit  of  deliberate  art.  In  America,  the  New  England  school 
that  had  ruled  the  mid  years  of  the  century  became  reminiscent, 
fastidious,  self-contained,  to  awake  in  sudden  realization  that  it 
no  longer  was  a  power,  that  its  own  second  generation  were  women 
led  by  Aldrich,  James,  Howells,  immigrants  from  New  York 
and  the  West.  The  early  leaders,  Emerson,  Whittier,  Lowell,  all 
intensity  and  conviction,  had  been  replaced  by  the  school  of  de 
liberate  workmen  who  had  no  message  for  their  times,  only  tech 
nique  and  brilliancy. 


This  reaction  from  the  New  England  school  can  be  studied  no 
where  more  convincingly  than  in  the  personalities  and  work  of 
Henry  James,  father  and  son.  The  elder  James,  companion  of 
Carlyle  and  Emerson  and  Alcott,  disciple  and  interpreter  of 
Swedenborg  and  Sandeman,  was  a  typical  product  of  the  mid- 
century  school — mystical,  intense,  concerned  with  the  inner  rather 
than  the  other  aspects  of  man.  "Henry  James  was  true  com- 

180 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  187 

fort,"  Emerson  wrote  in  his  diary  in  1850;  "wise,  gentle,  pol 
ished,  with  heroic  manners  and  a  serenity  like  the  sun. ' '  He  pur 
sued  no  profession,  but  like  Alcott  devoted  his  life  to  philosophy 
and  to  literature.  He  wrote  for  the  few  a  small  handful  of  books, 
mostly  forgotten  now,  though  he  who  would  read  them  will  find 
them  clothed  in  a  richness  of  style  and  a  felicity  of  expression 
that  reminds  one  of  the  prose  of  the  greater  periods  of  English 
literature.1 

The  son  of  this  mid-century  genius,  Henry  James,  Jr.,  cultured, 
cold,  scientific,  disciple  of  Turgenieff,  of  Flaubert  and  Daudet, 
Maupassant  and  Zola — "grandsons  of  Balzac" — stands  as  the 
type  of  the  "later  manner,"  the  new  school  that  wrote  without 
message,  that  studied  with  intensity  the  older  models,  that  talked 
evermore  of  its  "art." 

' '  We  know  very  little  about  a  talent, ' '  this  younger  James  has 
written  in  his  essay  on  Stevenson,  "till  we  know  where  it  grew 
up,"  The  James  family,  we  know,  grew  up  outside  the  New 
England  environment,  in  the  State  of  New  York — first  at  Albany, 
where  the  future  novelist  was  born  in  1843,  then  until  he  was 
twelve  in  New  York  City.  But  this  in  reality  tells  us  nothing. 
The  boy  grew  up  in  London  rather  than  New  York.  The  father 
had  inherited  means  that  permitted  a  retired  and  scholarly  life. 
Following  the  birth  of  Henry,  his  second  son,  he  had  taken  his 
family  for  a  year  and  a  half  to  England,  and  he  had  come  back, 
both  he  and  his  wife,  to  quote  his  son 's  words,  ' '  completely  Euro- 
peanized."  "Had  all  their  talk  for  its  subject,  in  my  infant 
ears,  that  happy  time  ? — did  it  deal  only  with  London  and  Picca 
dilly  and  the  Green  Park?  ...  I  saw  my  parents  homesick,  as 
I  conceived,  for  the  ancient  order. ' ' 2  He  grew  up  in  the  presence 
of  imported  books  and  papers,  the  smell  of  whose  ink  fresh  from 
London  and  the  Strand  fed  his  imagination. 

Even  his  playmates  transported  him  into  the  old  world.  It 
Was  one  Louis  De  Coppet,  a  small  boy,  "straight  from  the  Lake 
of  Geneva,"  that  first  really  aroused  in  him  "the  sense  of  Europe 
.  .  .  that  pointed  prefigurement  of  the  manners  of  'Europe/ 

1  James's  chief  works  are  Society  the  Redeemed  Form  of  Man,  Remarks 
on  the  Gospels,  Moralism  and  Christianity,  The  Nature  of  Evil,  Substance 
and  Shadows,  The  Secret  of  Swedenborg,  What  is  the  State?  The  Church 
of  Christ,  Christianity  the  Lyric  of  Creation,  and  Literary  Remains,  edited 
by  William  James. 

2  A  Small  Boy  and  Others. 


188  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

which,  inserted  wedge-like,  if  not  to  say  peg-like,  into  my  young 
allegiance  was  to  split  the  tender  organ  into  such  unequal  halves. 
His  the  toy  hammer  that  drove  in  the  very  point  of  the  golden 
nail.  It  was  as  if  there  had  been  a  mild  magic  in  that  breath, 
however  scant,  of  another  world.*'  8  While  other  lads  were  read 
ing  their  juveniles,  the  young  James  was  poring  over  Punch. 
"From  about  1850  to  1855,"  he  writes  in  his  essay  on  Du 
Maurier,  speaking  of  himself  in  the  third  person,  "he  lived,  in 
imagination,  no  small  part  of  the  time,  in  the  world  represented 
by  the  pencil  of  Leech.  .  .  .  These  things  were  the  features  of  a 
world  which  he  longed  so  to  behold  that  the  familiar  woodcuts 
grew  at  last  as  real  to  him  as  the  furniture  of  his  home. ' ' 

II 

Such  was  the  early  environment  of  Henry  James.  Refinement 
and  rare  culture  breathed  upon  his  cradle  and  surrounded  his 
whole  boyhood  like  an  atmosphere.  He  was  kept  sheltered  from 
the  world  without,  as  from  something  coarse  and  degrading.  He 
was  not  allowed  to  attend  the  public  schools.  *  *  Considering  with 
much  pity  our  four  stout  boys, ' '  the  father  wrote  to  Emerson  in 
1849,  "who  have  no  playroom  within  doors  and  import  shocking 
bad  manners  from  the  street,  we  gravely  ponder  whether  it 
would  n't  be  better  to  go  abroad  for  a  few  years  with  them,  allow 
ing  them  to  absorb  French  and  German  and  get  such  a  sensuous 
education  as  they  cannot  get  here. ' '  4 

The  plan  did  not  mature  until  1855  when  the  boy  was  twelve. 
In  the  interim  tutors  were  employed  for  his  education  who  in 
structed  him  with  desultory,  changing  methods,  allowing  him 
always  to  take  apparently  the  paths  of  his  preference.  In  these 
same  paths  he  seems  to  have  continued  during  the  four  years  of 
his  residence  abroad  with  his  parents  in  London,  Geneva,  Bou- 
logne-sur-Mer,  and  Paris.  All  harshness  he  avoided,  all  sharp 
ness  of  discipline — mathematics,  examinations.  He  would  sit, 
boy  as  he  was,  only  in  the  places  of  beauty  and  refinement.  '  *  The 
whole  perfect  Parisianism  I  seemed  to  myself  always  to  have  pos 
sessed  mentally — even  if  I  had  but  just  turned  twelve."5 

One  does  not  understand  Henry  James  who  neglects  this  forma- 

*A  Small  Boy  and  Others. 
*  Notes  of  a  Son  and  Brother. 
CA  Small  Boy  and  Others. 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  189 

tive  period  of  his  life.  He  returned  to  America  an  esthete,  a 
dreamer,  with  his  heart  in  the  lands  of  culture,  dissatisfied  with 
the  rush  and  rudeness  that  were  preparing  a  new  world  for  its 
future.  He  was  too  frail  in  health  to  enter  the  armies  which 
soon  were  recruiting  about  him  for  the  great  war;  he  had  no  in 
clination,  because  of  his  father's  prejudice,  to  undertake  a  col 
lege  course ;  he  shrank  from  the  usual  professions  open  to  young 
men  of  his  class.  He  did  for  a  year  attend  lectures  at  the  Har 
vard  Law  School,  but  it  was  with  no  thought  of  preparing  for  a 
legal  career.  He  dreamed  of  literature  as  a  profession.  He 
would  woo  the  muse,  but  the  muse  iie  would  woo  "was  of  course 
the  muse  of  prose  fiction — never  for  the  briefest  hour  in  my  case 
the  presumable,  not  to  say  the  presuming,  the  much-taking-for- 
granted  muse  of  rime,  with  whom  I  had  never  had,  even  in 
thought,  the  faintest  flirtation."  For  this  profession  he  trained 
himself  as  deliberately  and  as  laboriously  as  if  it  were  the  violin 
that  he  was  to  master,  or  the  great  organ.  He  read  industriously, 
especially  in  the  French;  he  resided  now  in  Boston,  where  his 
father  at  last  had  settled,  now  in  France,  now  in  Italy.  Like 
Story,  the  sculptor,  whom  in  so  many  ways  he  resembled,  he 
would  live  at  the  richest  centers  of  his  art.  Finally,  in  the  late 
seventies,  he  took  up  his  residence  permanently  abroad  to  return 
only  as  a  rare  visitant. 

Ill 

Henry  James  more  than  any  other  American  author  stands  for 
specialization,  for  a  limited  field  cultivated  intensively  and  ex 
clusively.  Poetry,  as  he  has  explained,  was  no  part  of  his  en 
dowment;  he  never  attempted  it  even  at  the  age  when  all  men 
are  poets;  romance  never  attracted  him.  He  approached  his 
chosen  field  of  prose  fiction  deliberately  as  a  scientist,  and  pre 
pared  himself  for  it  as  a  man  studies  medicine.  He  began  as  he 
ended — more  crude  in  his  art  to  be  sure,  more  conventional,  more 
youthful  in  thought  and  diction,  yet  not  fundamentally  different 
from  his  final  manner. 

His  first  published  work,  The  Story  of  a  Year,  which  appeared 
in  the  March,  1865,  number  of  the  Atlantic,  at  first  reading  seems 
little  different  from  the  hundreds  of  tales  of  the  Civil  War  that 
were  appearing  everywhere  during  the  period.  It  is  full  of  a 
young  man 's  smartness  and  literary  affectations :  "In  early  May, 


190  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

two  years  ago,  a  young  couple  I  wot  of, ' '  etc.  ' '  Good  reader,  this 
narrative  is  averse  to  retrospect,"  etc.  And  yet  the  story,  de 
spite  its  youthfulness,  contains  all  the  elements  that  we  now  asso 
ciate  with  the  fiction  of  Henry  James.  It  is  first  of  all  a  slight 
story — not  so  slight  as  some  of  the  later  work,  but  nevertheless  a 
mere  episode  expanded  into  a  novelette ;  furthermore,  it  was  writ 
ten  not  so  much  for  the  displaying  of  movement  of  incident  as 
for  the  analysis  of  movements  of  feeling  and  the  growth  of  ele 
ments  of  character :  *  *  I  have  to  chronicle, ' '  he  says  at  one  point, 
"another  silent  transition."  Then  too  its  ending  suggests  the 
French  school : 

"No,  no,  no,"  she  almost  shrieked,  turning  about  in  the  path.     "I 
forbid  you  to  follow  me." 
But  for  all  that  he  went  in. 

"We  stand  uncertain,  startled,  piqued — then  the  suggestion 
comes  surging  over  us :  Perhaps  the  author  means  that  she  mar 
ried  him  after  all!  Could  she  doit?  Did  she  do  it?  And  then 
we  find  with  a  thrill  of  surprise  that  he  has  given  us  the  full 
answer  in  his  previous  analysis  of  her  character.  It  is  finesse,  it 
is  the  careful  adjustment  of  parts,  it  is  deliberate  art. 

There  are  other  characteristics  in  the  story  that  were  to  mark 
all  the  work  of  James.  The  tale,  for  instance,  leaves  us  unmoved. 
We  admire  its  brilliancy,  but  at  no  point  does  it  grip  us  with  its 
tragedy  or  its  comedy.  The  faithlessness  of  the  heroine  and  the 
death  of  the  hero  alike  leave  us  cold.  We  do  not  care.  Sym 
pathy,  the  sympathy  of  comprehension,  that  sympathy  that  en 
ters  into  the  little  world  the  author  has  created  and  for  a  time 
loses  itself  as  if  it  were  actually  native  there — of  this  there  is 
nothing.  It  is  all  objective,  external  phenomena  observed  and 
recorded  on  a  pad — a  thing  alone  of  the  intellect. 

That  James  should  have  followed  this  story  with  an  essay  on 
' ' The  Novels  of  George  Eliot"  is  no  mere  coincidence.  How  com 
pletely  he  had  saturated  himself  with  all  the  work  of  the  great 
English  sibyl,  appears  on  every  page.  Her  faithfulness  to  her 
material,  her  vivid  photographs,  her  devotion  to  science  which 
little  by  little  crushed  out  her  woman's  heart,  her  conception  of 
the  novel  as  the  record  of  a  dissection — the  reactions  of  human 
souls  under  the  scalpel  and  the  microscope,  her  materialism  that 
refused  all  testimony  save  that  of  the  test-tube  and  the  known 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  191 

reagents,  that  reduced  man  to  a  problem  in  psychology — all  this 
made  its  reflex  upon  the  young  student.  He  too  became  a  scien 
tist,  taking  nothing  for  granted,  stripping  himself  of  all  illusions, 
relegating  the  ideal,  the  intuitive,  the  spiritual  to  the  realm  of  the 
outgrown;  he  too  became  a  taker  of  notes — "The  new  school  of 
fiction  in  France  is  based  very  much  on  the  taking  of  notes,"  he 
remarks  in  his  essay  on  Daudet.  "The  library  of  the  great 
Flaubert,  of  the  brothers  Goncourt,  of  Emile  Zola,  and  of  the 
writer  of  whom  I  speak,  must  have  been  in  a  large  measure  a 
library  of  memorandum-books. " 6  In  his  earlier  work  at  least, 
he  was  George  Eliot  with  the  skill  and  finesse  of  Maupassant, 
and  he  may  be  summed  up  with  his  whole  school  in  the  words  he 
has  put  into  the  mouth  of  his  own  Anastasia  Blumenthal:  "It 
was  meager,"  he  makes  her  say  of  the  singing  of  Adelina  Patti, 
"it  was  trivial,  it  lacked  soul.  You  can't  be  a  great  artist  with 
out  a  great  passion. ' ' 

IV 

During  the  first  period  of  his  literary  life,  the  period  that  ended 
somewhere  in  the  early  nineties,  James  took  as  the  subject  of  his 
study  that  vagrom  area  that  lies  on  the  borderland  between  the 
old  culture  of  Europe  and  the  new  rawness  of  America.  Howells 
has  made  much  of  the  longings  of  certain  classes  in  the  older 
parts  of  his  native  land  to  visit  the  European  cities,  and  he  has 
pictured  more  than  once  their  idealizations  of  foreign  things, 
their  retrospections  and  dr earnings.  James  showed  these  Ameri 
cans  actually  in  Europe,  their  manners  as  seen  against  the  older 
background,  their  crudeness  and  strength;  and  in  doing  so  he 
produced  what  was  widely  hailed  as  the  new  international  novel. 
There  was  nothing  really  new  about  it.  James  wrote  of  Ameri 
cans  in  Europe  just  as  Mark  Twain  wrote  of  Americans  on  the 
Mississippi  or  in  California.  As  a  scientist  he  must  deal  only 
with  facts  which  had  passed  under  his  own  observation — that  was 
his  much-discussed  "realism" — and  the  life  that  he  was  most 
familiar  with  was  the  life  of  the  pensions  and  grand  hotels  of 
Rome  and  Switzerland  and  Paris  and  London. 

His  world  in  reality  was  small.  He  had  been  reared  in  a 
cloister-like  atmosphere  where  he  had  dreamed  of  "life"  rather 
than  lived  it.  It  is  almost  pathetic  to  think  of  him  going  up 

e  Partial  Portraits,  1894  ed.,  207. 


192  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

to  the  Harvard  Law  School  because  in  a  vague  way  it  stood  for 
something  which  he  had  missed  and  longed  to  feel.  "I  thought 
of  it  under  the  head  of  'life,'  "  he  says.  He  had  played  in  his 
childhood  with  books  rather  than  boys;  he  had  been  kept  away 
from  his  natural  playmates  because  of  their  "shocking  bad  man 
ners";  he  had  never  mingled  with  men  in  a  business  or  a  profes 
sional  way ;  he  had  never  married ;  he  stood  aloof  from  life  and 
observed  it  without  being  a  part  of  it.  Americans  he  knew  chiefly 
from  the  specimens  he  had  found  in  Europe  during  his  long  resi 
dences;  European  society  he  knew  as  a  visitor  from  without. 
With  nothing  was  he  in  sympathy  in  the  full  meaning  of  the 
word,  that  sympathy  which  includes  its  own  self  in  the  group 
under  observation. 

For  ten  years  he  wrote  studies,  essays  on  his  masters,  George 
Eliot,  Balzac,  Daudet,  and  stories  that  were  not  greatly  different 
from  these  essays — analyses  of  types,  and  social  conditions,  and 
of  the  reactions  that  follow  when  a  unit  of  one  social  system  is 
thrust  into  another.  In  1875  he  enlarged  his  area  with  Roderick 
Hudson,  a  novel  of  length,  and  he  followed  it  with  The  American, 
The  Europeans,  Daisy  Miller,  and  others,  all  of  them  international 
in  setting.  In  his  later  period,  the  period,  say,  after  1890,  he 
confined  himself  to  the  depicting  of  society  in  London,  the  rapid 
change  toward  unconventionality  in  manners  that  marked  the  end 
of  the  century.  He  was  so  far  now  from  contact  with  his  native 
land  that  of  necessity  he  must  cease  to  use  it  as  his  source  of 
literary  material. 

The  earlier  group  of  stories  center  about  a  comparatively  few 
types.  First,  there  are  the  young  men  of  the  Roland  Mallet, 
Ralph  Touchett  order,  "highly  civilized  young  Americans,"  he 
calls  them  in  Confidence, l '  born  to  an  easy  fortune  and  a  tranquil 
destiny  " ;  ' '  men  who  conceive  of  life  as  a  fine  art. '  '  His  novels 
are  full  of  them,  creatures  of  whim  who  know  nothing  of  the 
bitterness  of  struggle,  who  drift  from  capital  to  capital  of  Europe 
mindful  only  of  their  own  comfort,  highly  sensitive  organisms 
withal,  subject  to  evanescent  emotions  which  they  analyze  with 
minuteness,  and  brilliant  at  every  point  when  their  intellectual 
powers  are  called  into  play.  They  talk  in  witty  flashes  for  hours 
on  end  and  deliver  finished  lectures  at  the  call  of  an  epigram. 
They  cannot  talk  without  philosophizing  or  hear  a  maiden  laugh 
without  analysis.  They  are  brilliant  all  the  time.  The  conversa- 


THE  CLASSICAL  EEACTION  193 

tion  of  Gilbert  Osmond  and  Mrs.  Merle  fills  Isabel  with  amaze 
ment:  "They  talked  extremely  well;  it  struck  her  almost  as  a 
dramatic  entertainment,  rehearsed  in  advance. ' '  Page  after  page 
they  talk  in  a  staccato,  breathless  profusion  of  wit,  epigram, 
repartee,  verbal  jewels  worthy  of  Alexander  Pope  flying  at  every 
opening  of  the  lips — is  even  French  culture  as  brilliant  as  this? 
Mr.  Brand  in  The  Europeans  listening  to  the  Baroness  Miinster, 
bursts  out  rapturously  at  last,  "Now  I  suppose  that  is  what  is 
called  conversation,  real  conversation.  It  is  quite  the  style  we 
have  heard  about — the  style  of  Madame  de  Stael,  of  Madame 
Recamier." 

Within  this  narrow  circle  of  Europe-visiting,  highly  civilized, 
occupationless  men  and  women,  James  is  at  his  best.  Had  he  not 
been  reared  by  Henry  James,  Senior  ?  Had  he  not  lived  his  whole 
life  in  the  charmed  circle  of  the  highly  civilized  ?  But  once  out 
side  of  this  small  area  he  ceases  to  be  convincing.  Of  the  great 
mass  of  the  American  people  he  knows  but  little.  He  has  seen 
them  only  at  a  distance. 

As  some  rich  woman,  on  a  winter's  morn, 
Eyes  through  her  silken  curtains  the  poor  drudge 
Who  with  numb,  blackened  fingers  makes  her  fire  .  .  . 
And  wonders  how  she  lives,  and  what  the  thoughts 
Of  that  poor  drudge  may  be, 

so  of  James  when  he  attempts  to  portray  the  great  mass  of  his 
countrymen.  One  needs  to  examine  only  the  case  of  Christopher 
Newman  in  The  American.  Given  a  man  who  left  home  at  eight 
years  of  age  to  work  in  the  mills,  who  at  length  manufactures 
wash  tubs,  then  leather,  and  at  last  by  sheer  Yankee  impudence 
and  energy  makes  himself  a  millionaire  at  forty.  Thrust  this 
man  suddenly  into  the  circles  of  French  nobility,  place  him  in  the 
presence  of  the  Countess  de  Belgrade  and  ask  yourself  if  he  will 
talk  like  this : 

She  is  a  woman  of  conventions  and  proprieties;  her  world  is  the 
world  of  things  immutably  decreed.  But  how  she  is  at  home  in  it,  and 
what  a  paradise  she  finds  it.  She  walks  about  in  it  as  if  it  were  a 
blooming  park,  a  Garden  of  Eden ;  and  when  she  sees  "This  is  genteel," 
or  "This  is  improper,"  written  on  a  mile-stone  she  stops  ecstatically,  as 
if  she  were  listening  to  a  nightingale  or  smelling  a  rose. 

This  is  not  Christopher  Newman ;  this  is  no  American  self-made 


194  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

man  talking ;  it  is  Henry  James  himself.  Did  he  realize  his  mis 
take  when  his  art  was  more  mature  and  his  judgment  more  ripe  ? 
Collate  the  changes  which  he  made  thirty  years  later  for  the  final 
edition  of  The  American.  Newman  is  asked,  for  instance,  if  he 
is  visiting  Europe  for  the  first  time.  According  to  the  earlier 
version  he  replies,  "Very  much  so";  according  to  the  latest  ver 
sion,  " Quite  immensely  the  first."  Is  more  proof  needed?  All 
his  average  Americans — Daisy  Miller,  Henrietta  Stackpole,  Cas 
per  Goodwood,  and  the  others,  fall  short  in  the  same  way.  Ob 
jectively  they  are  true  to  life.  As  a  painter  of  external  portraits, 
as  a  depicter  of  tricks  of  personality,  of  manners,  of  all  that 
makes  up  a  perfect  external  likeness,  James  is  surpassed  not  even 
by  Howells;  but  he  fails  to  reach  the  springs  of  life.  Howells's 
Silas  Lapham  is  a  living  personality;  James's  Christopher  New 
man  is  a  lay  figure  in  Yankee  costume.  For  James  knows  Ameri 
cans  chiefly  as  he  has  studied  them  in  pensions  and  hotels  along 
the  grand  tour.  He  has  not  been  introduced  to  them,  he  has 
simply  watched  them — their  uneasiness  in  their  new  element,  their 
attempts  at  adjustment,  their  odd  little  mistakes ;  he  hears  them 
talk  at  the  tables  around  him — their  ejaculations,  their  wonder, 
their  enthusiasm,  and  he  jots  it  all  down.  He  has  no  sympathy, 
he  has  no  feeling,  he  has  no  object,  save  the  scientific  desire  to 
record  phenomena. 

This  material  he  weaves  into  novels — stories,  but  not  stories 
told  with  narrative  intent,  not  stories  for  entertainment  or  won 
der  or  sensation.  The  story  is  a  clinic,  a  dissection,  a  psycholog 
ical  jjeininar.  What  Maisie  Knew  is  an  addition  to  the  literature 
of  chiTH  study.  It  is  as  if  he  had  set  himself  to  observe  case  after 
case  for  his  brother,  William  James,  to  use  as  materials  for  psy 
chological  generalizations  and  a  final  treatise.  The  data  are  often 
inaccurate  because  of  the  observer's  personal  equation;  it  does 
not  always  conform  with  the  results  of  our  own  observing — we 
wonder,  for  instance,  if  he  is  as  far  afield  in  his  pictures  of  the 
European  aristocracy  as  in  those  of  his  average  Americans — yet 
the  process  is  always  the  same. 

Rapidity  of  movement  is  foreign  to  his  method;  he  is  not  con 
cerned  ^vith  movement.  On  the  portrait  of  one  lady  he  will  ex 
pend  two  hundred  thousand  words.  Basil  in  The  Bostonians 
passes  the  evening  with  his  Cousin  Olive:  the  call  occupies  nine 
chapters;  Verena  Tarrant  calls  on  Miss  Chancellor:  it  is  two 


THE  CLASSICAL  KEACTION  195 

chapters  before  either  of  them  moves  or  speaks.  It  transports  us 
back  into  the  eighteenth  century  to  the  nine-volume  novel.  At 
every  step  analysis,  searchings  for  the  springs  of  thought  and  act 
— philosophizing.  Lord  Warburton  stands  before  Miss  Archer  to 
propose  marriage,  but  before  we  hear  his  voice  we  must  analyze 
minutely  his  sensations  and  hers.  Her  first  feeling  was  alarm. 
"This  alarm  was  composed  of  several  elements,  not  all  of  which 
were  disagreeable ;  she  had  spent  several  days  in  analyzing  them, ' ' 
etc.  A  review  of  this  analysis  fills  a  page.  Then  we  study  the 
psychology  of  the  lover.  First,  he  wonders  why  he  is  about  to 
propose:  "He  calculated  that  he  had  spent  about  twenty-six 
hours  in  her  company.  He  had  summed  up  all  this — the  per 
versity  of  the  impulse,  the — "  etc.,  etc.  A  proposal  each  step 
and  speech  of  which  is  followed  by  a  careful  clinic  to  determine 
the  resultant  emotion,  and  a  rigid  analysis  of  all  the  elements 
that  combined  to  produce  that  particular  shade  of  emotion  and 
no  other,  can  hardly  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  average  modern 
reader  of  fiction.  It  is  the  province  of  the  novel  to  produce  with 
verisimilitude  an  area  of  human  life  and  to  make  the  reader  for  a 
swift  period  at  home  in  that  area ;  it  is  not  the  record  of  a  scien 
tific  investigation. 


James  has  dealt  almost  wholly  with  exceptions  and  unusual 
cases.  His  "Bostonians"  are  not  typical  Bostonians  at  all — it  is 
not  too  strong  to  declare  that  they  are  abnormalities ;  his  "  Euro 
peans"  are  almost  as  bad;  his  characters  studied  along  the 
grand  tour  are  rare  exceptions  if  we  compare  them  with  the 
great  average  American  type.  Of  strong,  elemental  men  and 
women,  the  personalities  shown  by  novelists  like  Fielding  and 
Tolstoy  and  Hardy  and  Mark  Twain,  he  knows  nothing.  He  is 
feminine  rather  than  masculine;  he  is  exquisite  rather  than 
strong.  In  his  essay  on  Turgenieff  he  records  that  the  great 
Russian  was  never  one  of  his  admirers.  "I  do  not  think  my 
stories  struck  him  as  quite  meat  for  men. ' ' 

There  is  a  lack,  too,  of  seriousness :  the  novels  really  accomplish 
nothing.  "The  manner,"  according  to  Turgenieff 's  opinion,  "is 
more  apparent  than  the  matter. ' '  Style  is  preferred  to  message. 
There  is  no  humor,  no  stirring  of  emotions,  nothing  pitched  above 
the  key  of  perfect  refinement — the  reader  does  not  feel  and  there- 


196  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

fore  does  not  care.  It  is  a  mere  intellectual  exercise,  a  problem 
in  psychology. 

That  James  himself  was  aware  of  this  weakness  we  learn  from 
his  essay  on  Daudet.  Of  Sidonie  Chebe  he  writes,  "She  is  not 
felt,"  and  again,  "His  weakness  has  been  want  of  acquaintance 
with  his  subject.  He  has  not  felt  what  he  has  observed/'  It  is 
a  judgment  that  sweeps  over  the  whole  fiction  of  Henry  James. 
He  has  never  been  possessed  by  his  subject  or  by  his  characters, 
he  has  never  been  seized  and  hurried  along  by  his  stories,  he  has 
never  told  them  because  they  had  to  be  told,  he  has  never  written 
a  single  sentence  with  held  breath  and  beating  heart,  and  as  a 
result  his  work  can  never  find  for  long  an  audience  save  the  select 
few ;  an  audience  indeed  that  at  length  must  become  as  restricted 
as  that  which  now  reads  the  exquisite  creations  of  the  elder  James, 
his  father. 

There  is  another  element  that  must  be  weighed  before  we  can 
understand  fully  the  work  of  this  writer,  an  element  that  is  dis 
tinctly  classical.  The  basis  underlying  all  of  this  mass  of  analysis 
is  self -consciousness.  Never  was  author  more  subjective  and 
more  enamoured  of  his  own  psychological  processes  than  Henry 
James.  Never  does  he  lose  sight  of  himself.  These  characters  of 
his  are  all  of  them  Henry  James.  They  slip  out  of  their  costumes 
at  slightest  provocation  to  talk  with  his  tones,  to  voice  his  philos 
ophy,  to  follow  his  mental  processes.  In  externals  they  are  true 
to  model  though  not  always  deeply;  the  hands  are  the  hands  of 
Christopher  Newman,  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of  Henry  James. 

The  tendency  to  self-consciousness  has  colored  everything. 
Even  his  criticism  has  had  its  personal  basis.  It  has  consisted 
of  studies  in  expatriation:  the  life  of  Story,  that  prototype  of 
James;  the  life  of  Hawthorne,  that  exposition  of  the  rawness  of 
America  and  the  unfitness  of  the  new  land  for  the  residence  of 
men  of  culture;  The  American  Scene — that  mental  analysis 
tracing  every  shade  of  emotion  as  he  revisits  what  has  become  to 
him  a  foreign  land.  His  literary  essays  cover  largely  the  ex 
periences  of  his  apprenticeship.  They  trace  the  path  of  his  own 
growth  in  art.  They  are  strings  of  brilliants,  flashing,  often  in 
comparable,  but  they  are  not  criticism  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word  criticism.  Few  men  have  said  such  brilliant  things  about 
Balzac,  Maupassant,  Daudet,  Stevenson  as  James,  yet  for  all  that 
a  critic  in  the  wider  sense  of  the  term  really  he  is  not.  He  lacks 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  197 

perspective,  philosophy,  system.  He  makes  epigrams  and  pithy 
remarks.  The  ability  to  project  himself  into  the  standpoint  of 
another,  to  view  with  sympathy  of  comprehension,  he  did  not 
have.  Within  his  limited  range  he  could  measure  and  the  rules 
of  art  he  could  apply  with  brilliancy,  but  he  could  not  feel. 

Self-study,  the  pursuit  of  every  fleeting  impression,  became  in 
the  author  at  last  a  veritable  obsession.  In  his  later  books  like 
Notes  of  a  Son  and  Brother,  for  instance,  and  The  American 
Scene,  his  finger  is  constantly  upon  his  own  pulse.  He  seeks  the 
source  of  his  every  fleeting  emotion.  He  does  not  tell  us  why  he 
did  not  want  to  enter  Harvard ;  he  tries  rather  to  trace  the  subtle 
thread  of  causation  that  could  have  led  him  not  to  want  to  want 
to  go.  When  A  Small  Boy  and  Others  appeared  the  world  cried 
out,  "Is  it  possible  that  at  last  Henry  James  has  revealed  him 
self?"  whereas  the  truth  was  that  few  men  ever  have  revealed 
themselves  more.  All  this  endless  dissection  and  analysis  and 
scrutiny  of  the  inner  workings  is  in  reality  an  analysis  of  Henry 
James  himself.  Objective  he  could  not  be.  He  could  only  stand 
in  his  solitude  and  interpret  his  own  introspections. 
'"  And  his  solitude  it  has  been  and  his  self-contemplation  that 
have  evolved  his  later  manner.  A  consciously  wrought-out  style 
like  Pater's  or  Maupassant's  comes  always  as  a  result  of  soli 
tude,  of  self-conscious  concentration,  of  classicism.  Eternal  con 
templation  of  manner  can  result  only  in  mannerism  more  and 
more,  until  mannerism  becomes  the  ruling  characteristic.  Clas 
sicism  perishes  at  last  of  its  own  refinement. 

VI 

The  evolution  of  William  Dean  Howells  is  a  problem  vastly  dif 
ferent.  To  place  Howells  as  a  leader  of  those  forces  of  refine 
ment  that  followed  after  the  New  England  period  is  seemingly  to 
ignore  the  facts  of  his  origin  and  his  early  training,  for  the  little 
river  town  on  the  Ohio  where  he  was  born,  in  1837  was  as  far 
removed  from  New  England  manners  and  sentiments  as  was  even 
the  Hannibal  of  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huckleberry  Finn.  He  was 
reared  to  despise  Yankees  as  a  mean-spirited  race,  and  he  spent 
his  childhood  and  young  manhood  in  close  contact  with  the  rough, 
virile  material  that  was  shaping  up  the  great  West. 

Howells  was  of  the  third  generation  in  Ohio,  a  Westerner  of  the ' 
Westerners.     His  grandfather,  a  Welsh  manufacturer,  "came  to 


' 

i 


198  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

this  country  early  in  the  nineteenth  century  and  settled  his  family 
in  a  log  cabin  in  the  Ohio  woods,  that  they  might  be  safe  from 
the  sinister  influences  of  the  village  where  he  was  managing  some 
woolen  mills. ' ' 7  He  finally  settled  down  as  a  druggist  and  book 
seller  in  a  small  village,  and  his  son,  perhaps  from  contact  with 
his  father's  wares,  developed  a  passion  for  literature — strange 
acquisition,  it  would  seem,  to  gain  in  the  wilderness. 

It  was  from  this  literary  father  rather  than  from  his  mother, 
who  was  from  the  river-faring  folk  of  the  region,  that  the  young 
William  Dean  Howells  was  to  derive  his  early  love  for  books. 
He  seems  to  have  been  a  Henry  James,  Senior,  with  Southwestern 
training  and  environment  and  a  lack  of  means  that  forbade  his 
following  the  path  of  his  desires.  He  too  was  a  Swedenborgian 
and  a  mystic,  and  he  too,  despite  unfavorable  surroundings,  kept 
in  his  household  a  literary  atmosphere.  Moore's  Lalla  Rookh, 
Thomson's  Seasons,  Dickens,  Scott,  Cowper,  Burns,  he  read  to 
his  family — poetry  the  most  of  it,  for  "his  own  choice  was  for 
poetry,  and  most  of  our  library,  which  was  not  given  to  theology, 
was  given  to  poetry. ' '  An  unusual  character  indeed  in  the  head 
long,  practical  West  of  the  mid  century !  While  the  mother  was 
about  her  tasks  and  the  children  were  shelling  peas  for  dinner, 
he  would  sit  and,  tell  of  Cervantes  and  the  adventures  of  Don 
Quixote,  transporting  the  little  group  into  castles  in  Spain,  and 
creating  visions  and  longings  that  were  to  dominate  the  whole 
life  of  his  little  son.  He  watched  with  pleasure  the  literary  tend 
encies  of  the  boy :  ' '  when  I  began  to  show  a  liking  for  literature 
he  was  eager  to  guide  my  choice. ' ' 

I  The  father  satisfied  his  literary  longings  by  editing  country 
newspapers  and  serving  as  reporter  at  various  times  at  the  State 
capital  during  sessions  of  the  legislature.  He  remained  in  no 
place  long.  With  what  Howells  has  called  "the  vagarious  im 
pulse  which  is  so  strong  in  our  craft, ' '  he  removed  his  family  to 
new  fields  of  labor  with  surprising  regularity.  There  was  little 
chance  for  schooling.  Almost  from  infancy  the  boy  was  a  part 
of  his  father's  printing  office.  In  A  Boy's  Town,  that  delightful 
autobiographic  fragment  told  in  the  third  person,  he  has  given  a 
glimpse  of  this  early  period : 

My  boy  was  twelve  years  old  by  that  time  and  was  already  a  swift 
7  My  Literary  Passions.  4. 


THE  CLASSICAL  KEACTION  199 

compositor,  though  he  was  still  so  small  that  he  had  to  stand  on  a  chair 
to  reach  the  case  in  setting  type  on  Tyler's  inaugural  message.  Bat 
what  he  lacked  in  stature  he  made  up  in  gravity  of  demeanor;  and  he 
got  the  name  of  "The  Old  Man"  from  the  printers  as  soon  as  he  began 
to  come  about  the  office,  which  he  did  almost  as  soon  as  he  could  walk. 
His  first  attempt  in  literature,  an  essay  on  the  vain  and  disappointing 
nature  of  human  life,  he  set  up  and  printed  off  himself  in  his  sixth  or 
seventh  year;  and  the  printing  office  was  in  some  sort  his  home,  as  well 
as  his  school,  his  university.  He  could  no  more  remember  learning  to 
set  type  than  he  could  remember  learning  to  read. 

The  autobiographical  writings  of  Howells  leave  us  with  the  im 
pression  of  a  gentle,  contemplative  boy  given  rather  to  reading 
and  dreaming  in  a  solitary  corner  than  to  Mark-Twain-like  ac 
tivities  with  Tom  Sawyers  and  Huck  Finns.  Though  by  birth  and 
rearing  he  was  a  complete  Westerner  of  the  river  section,  mingling 
freely  with  all  its  elements,  he  seems  never  to  have  taken  root 
in  the  region  or  to  have  been  much  influenced  by  it.  He  has 
spoken  somewhere  of  De  Quincey  as  a  man  ' '  eliminated  from  his 
time  and  place  by  his  single  love  for  books."  Howells,  like 
James,  was  a  detached  soul.  From  his  earliest  youth  he  was  not 
a  resident  of  Ohio,  but  a  resident  of  the  vaster  world  of  literature. 
He  read  enormously  and  with  passion,  and  from  his  boyhood  he 
seems — also  like  Henry  James — to  have  had  no  dream  of  other 
than  a  literary  career.  He  saw  not  the  headlong  West  that 
surged  about  him  but  the  realms  of  poetry  and  romance.  "To 
us  who  have  our  lives  so  largely  in  books,"  he  wrote  in  later 
years,  "the  material  world  is  always  the  fable,  and  the  ideal  the 
fact.  I  walked  with  my  feet  on  the  ground,  but  my  head  was  in 
the  clouds,  as  light  as  any  of  them.  ...  I  was  living  in  a  time  of 
high  political  tumult,  and  I  certainly  cared  very  much  for  the 
question  of  slavery  which  was  then  filling  the  minds  of  men;  I 
felt  deeply  the  shame  and  wrong  of  our  fugitive  slave  law ;  I  was 
stirred  by  the  news  from  Kansas,  where  the  great  struggle  be 
tween  the  two  great  principles  in  our  nationality  was  beginning 
in  bloodshed ;  but  I  cannot  pretend  that  any  of  these  things  were 
more  than  ripples  on  the  surface  of  my  intense  and  profound  in 
terest  in  literature. ' ' 8 

It  is  suggestive  that  his  earliest  "passions"  among  the  authors 
were  Goldsmith,  Irving,  and  Cervantes,  and  later  Pope,  Macaulay, 
and  Curtis — the  most  of  them  literary  artists  and  finishers,  with 

8  My  Literary  Passions. 


200  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

grace  of  style  and  softness  and  dreaminess  of  atmosphere,  rather 
than  stormy  creators  who  blazed  new  trails  and  crashed  into  the 
unknown  with  lawless  power.  He  taught  himself  the  use  of  lit 
erary  English  by  painstaking  imitation  of  the  classics  which  took 
his  young  fancy.  His  passion  for  Pope  was  long  continued. 
When  other  boys  in  the  schools  were  shirking  their  English  gram 
mar,  Howells  week  after  week  and  month  after  month  was  toiling 
at  imitations  of  the  great  master  of  incisive  English,  "rubbing  and 
polishing  at  my  wretched  verses  till  they  did  sometimes  take  on 
an  effect,  which,  if  it  was  not  like  Pope's,  was  like  none  of  mine." 
From  him  '  *  I  learned  how  to  choose  between  words  after  a  study 
of  their  fitness. "  Juveniles  and  boys'  books  of  adventure  he 
seems  never  to  have  known.  From  the  first  he  was  enamoured  of 
the  classics,  and  of  the  classics  best  fitted  to  educate  him  for  the 
career  that  was  to  be  his :  *  *  my  reading  from  the  first  was  such  as 
to  enamour  me  of  clearness,  of  definiteness. ' ' 

Never  was  youth  more  industrious  in  his  efforts  at  self-mastery. 
He  wasted  not  a  moment.  He  discovered  Macaulay  and  read  him 
as  most  boys  read  pirate  stories.  1 1  Of  course  I  reformed  my  prose 
style,  which  had  been  carefully  modeled  after  that  of  Goldsmith 
and  Irving,  and  began  to  write  in  the  manner  of  Macaulay,  in 
short,  quick  sentences  and  with  the  prevalent  use  of  brief  Anglo- 
Saxon  words. ' '  His  health  began  to  suffer  from  his  application, 
but  he  worked  steadily  on.  He  produced  quantities  of  poems  and 
even  a  novel  or  two  which  he  either  destroyed  or  consigned  to 
the  oblivion  of  the  newspaper  upon  which  he  worked.  Later  he 
enlarged  the  field  of  his  literary  apprenticeship  by  securing  a 
position  on  a  Columbus  journal,  or  as  he  has  himself  expressed  it, 
he  was  ' '  for  three  years  a  writer  of  news  paragraphs,  book  notices, 
and  political  leaders  on  a  daily  paper  in  an  inland  city. ' '  9  Then 
he  began  to  enlarge  his  literary  field  by  contributing  "poems  and 
sketches  and  criticisms  for  the  Saturday  Press  of  New  York."* 

In  December,  1859,  he  issued  his  first  book,  Poems  of  Two 
Friends,  a  small  volume  of  rather  ordinary  verses  written  in  con 
junction  with  J.  J.  Piatt,  and  a  few  months  later  he  published  a 
campaign  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  a  book  more  notable  for  its 
effect  upon  its  author 's  fortunes  than  for  any  quality  it  may  have 
had,  for  it  was  as  a  result  of  it  that  he  was  sent  in  1861  to  Italy 

9  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance. 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  201 

for  a  glorious  four  years  of  graduate  study,  if  we  may  so  term  it,' 
in  Italian  literature  and  language  and  life. 

One  cannot  dwell  too  carefully  upon  these  years  of  Howells 's 
literary  apprenticeship.  As  one  reads  his  published  work  one 
finds  from  the  first  no  immaturities.  He  burst  upon  the  reading 
public  as  a  finished  writer.  When  his  work  first  began  to  appear 
in  the  East,  the  North  American  Review  of  Boston  voiced  its  as 
tonishment  : 

We  made  occasion  to  find  out  something  about  him,  and  what  we 
learned  served  to  increase  our  interest.  This  delicacy,  it  appeared,  was 
a  product  of  the  rough  and  ready  West,  this  finish  the  natural  gift  of  a 
young  man  with  no  advantage  of  college  training,  who,  passing  from 
the  compositor's  desk  to  the  editorship  of  a  local  newspaper,  had  been 
his  own  faculty  of  the  humanities.  But  there  are  some  men  who  are 
born  cultivated.10 

But  Howells  was  not  born  cultivated;  he  achieved  cultivation 
by  a  process  of  self-discipline  that  has  few  parallels  in  the  history 
of  literature.  He  is  a  classicist  as  James  is  a  classicist.  If  his 
style  is  clear  and  concise,  if  he  knows  as  few  modern  authors  the 
resources  of  the  English  tongue,  it  is  because  he  gave  without  re 
serve  to  the  mastering  of  it  all  the  enthusiasm  and  time  and 
strength  of  his  youth  and  young  manhood.  He  was  not  a  genius : 
he  was  a  man  of  talent  of  the  Pope-Macaulay  order  that  makes  of 
literature  not  a  thing  of  inspirations  and  flashes  and  visions,  but 
a  profession  to  be  learned  as  one  learns  the  pipe  organ  after  years 
of  practice,  as  an  art  demanding  an  exquisite  skill  to  be  gained 
only  by  unremitting  toil. 

VII 

The  Howells  of  the  earlier  period  was  a  poet.  Speaking  of  the 
winter  of  1859-60,  which  saw  the  publication  of  his  first  volume, 
he  writes :  l  i  It  seemed  to  me  as  if  the  making  and  the  reading 
of  poetry  were  to  go  on  forever,  and  that  was  to  be  all  there  was 
to  it/'  "Inwardly  I  was  a  poet,  with  no  wish  to  be  anything 
else,  unless  in  a  moment  of  careless  affluence  I  might  so  far  forget 
myself  as  to  be  a  novelist." 

His  reading  more  and  more  was  in  the  poets.  Heine  he  read 
with  passion,  and  Longfellow  and  Tennyson,  and  then  Heine, 
evermore  Heine.  "Nearly  ten  years  afterwards  Mr.  Lowell 

10  October,  1865. 


202  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

wrote  me  about  something  of  mine  that  he  had  been  reading: 
'You  must  sweat  the  Heine  out  of  your  bones  as  men  do  mer 
cury.'  '      The  seven  poems  which  Lowell  accepted  and  printed 
in  the  Atlantic  in  1860  and  1861  are  redolent  of  Heine,  with 
i  here  and  there  traces  of  Longfellow.    When  he  came  East  just 
!  before  his  appointment  to  Venice  it  was  as  a  poet,  and  a  poet 
making  a  pilgrimage  to  the  mother-land  of  poesy. 

New  England  was  to  him  indeed  a  land  of  dreams  and  romance. 
"As  the  passionate  pilgrim  from  the  West,"  to  use  his  own  words, 
"approached  his  Holy  Land  at  Boston,"  he  felt  like  putting  the 
shoes  from  off  his  feet.  New  England  was  the  home  of  Emerson 
and  Longfellow  and  Holmes,  of  Whittier  and  Hawthorne  and 
Lowell,  and  all  the  Atlantic  immortals,  and  he  appreciated  it  as 
Irving  and  Willis  had  appreciated  old  England  earlier  in  the 
century,  or  as  Longfellow  and  Taylor  had  appreciated  the  con 
tinent  of  Europe. 

Following  this  passionate  pilgrimage  with  its  glimpses  of  the 
New  England  Brahmins,  came  the  transfer  of  the  young  West 
erner  to  Venice,  "the  Chief  City,"  as  he  somewhere  has  termed 
it,  "of  sentiment  and  fantasy."  It  was  like  stepping  from  the 
garish  light  of  to-day  into  the  pages  of  an  old  romance.  The 
duties  of  his  office  were  light,  the  salary  was  fifteen  hundred  dol 
lars  a  year,  and  he  was  enabled  to  give,  to  use  his  own  words, 
"nearly  four  years  of  nearly  uninterrupted  leisure"  to  a  study 
of  Italian  literature  and  to  poetic  composition.  We  may  catch 
glimpses  of  what  the  four  years  meant  to  the  eager  young  West 
erner  in  A  Foregone  Conclusion  and  A  Fearful  Responsibility, 
stories  that  center  about  an  American  consul  at  Venice.  The 
poetic  quality  of  the  period  was  heightened  in  the  second  year 
of  his  official  life  by  his  marriage — spring  and  Venice  and  a  bride 
with  whom  to  share  them — no  wonder  that  he  completed  a  long 
poem  in  terza  rima,  "dealing,"  as  he  has  expressed  it,  "with  a 
story  of  our  Civil  War  in  a  fashion  so  remote  that  no  editor 
would  print  it,"  and  that  he  deluged  the  magazines  of  two  con 
tinents  with  poems  and  poetic  sketches. 

For  the  earlier  Howells  was  a  poet — until  one  realizes  it  one 
fails  completely  to  understand  him.  He  turned  from  poetry 
reluctantly,  compelled  by  the  logic  of  his  time  and  by  the  fact 
that  he  had  no  compelling  message  for  his  age.  He  was  of  the 
contemplative,  classical  school,  more  at  home  in  the  eighteenth 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  203 

century  than  in  the  stormy  nineteenth.  He  published  in  1867 
No  Love  Lost,  A  Romance  of  Travel,  in  unrimed  pentameters, 
a  refined,  leisurely  poem  classical  in  form  and  spirit.  He  issued 
editions  of  his  poems  in  1873  and  1886,  and  again  as  late  as 
1895,  but  the  age  refused  to  regard  him  as  a  poet  and  he  was 
forced  into  other  fields.  "My  literary  life,"  he  observes  almost 
sadly  as  he  reviews  his  Venetian  period,  "almost  without  my 
willing  it,  had  taken  the  course  of  critical  observance  of  books 
and  men  in  their  actuality."11 

From  poetry  Howells  turned  to  sketches,  a  variety  of  compo 
sition  which  he  had  cultivated  since  his  boyhood.  Irving  had 
been  one  of  his  earliest  passions,  and  following  Irving  had  come 
Ik  Marvel  and  Hawthorne  and  Curtis — gentle,  contemplative 
writers  with  the  light  of  poetry  upon  their  work.  Even  like 
Irving  and  Longfellow  and  Taylor,  he  would  record  the  strange 
new  world  in  which  he  found  himself.  '  *  I  was  bursting  with  the 
most  romantic  expectations  of  life  in  every  way,  and  I  looked 
at  the  whole  world  as  material  that  might  be  turned  into  litera 
ture."  He  lived  note-book  in  hand.  Everything  was  new  and 
entrancing,  even  the  talk  of  servants  on  the  street  or  the  babble 
of  children  at  their  play.  It  was  all  so  new,  so  romantic,  so  re 
moved  from  the  world  that  he  always  had  known.  He  would 
reproduce  it  in  its  naked  truth  for  his  countrymen;  he  would 
turn  it  all  into  literature  for  the  magazines  of  America,  and  he 
would  republish  it  at  length  as  a  new  Sketch  Book. 

Venetian  Life  belongs  on  the  same  shelf  as  Outre  Her  and 
Views  Afoot  and  Castilian  Days — prose  sketches  with  the  golden 
light  of  youth  upon  them.  Italian  Journeys  is  the  first  and  best 
of  a  long  series  of  sentimental '  *  bummelings ' '  that  its  author  was 
to  record — delicious  ramblings,  descriptions,  characterizations — 
realistic  studies,  we  may  call  them,  made  by  a  poet.  Nothing 
that  Howells  ever  wrote  has  been  better  than  these  earlier  travel 
sketches,  half  poetry,  half  shrewd  observation.  In  his  later 
travel  sketches — Tuscan  Cities,  London  Films,  Certain  Delightful 
English  Towns,  and  the  like — this  element  grew  constantly  less 
and  less.  Wiser  they  undoubtedly  are,  and  more  scholarly  and 
philosophic,  but  the  freshness  and  poetic  charm  of  the  earlier 
Howells  is  not  in  them.  The  philosopher  has  taken  the  place  of 
the  poet. 

11  My  Literary  Passions,  154. 


204  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

VIII 

The  first  period  of  Howells's  literary  life,  the  period  of  sketches 
and  prose  studies,  covers  the  fifteen  years  of  his  connection  with 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  first  from  1866  to  1871  as  assistant  editor, 
and  then  from  1871  to  1881  as  editor.  He  had  returned  from 
Venice  a  cosmopolitan  and  an  accomplished  Italian  scholar. 
There  was  no  trace  of  the  West  upon  him ;  it  was  as  if  he  had 
always  lived  in  Boston.  His  sketches  now  centered  about  Cam 
bridge  life,  just  as  earlier  they  had  centered  upon  Italian  themes 
— careful  little  character  studies  like  "Mrs.  Johnson"  and  "My 
Doorstep  Acquaintance,"  little  sentimental  journeys  like  "A  Pe 
destrian  Tour"  and  "A  Day's  Pleasure,"  and  chatty  talks  about 
himself  and  his  opinions  and  experiences,  something  after  the 
manner  of  Dr.  Holmes,  a  variety  of  composition  in  which  he  was 
to  grow  voluminous  in  later  years. 

His  book  reviewing  in  the  Atlantic  during  this  period  is  notable 
from  the  fact  that  almost  all  of  the  chief  works  of  the  new  na 
tional  period  of  which  he  was  a  part  passed  under  his  pen. 
Freshness  and  truth  and  originality  never  failed  to  arrest  his 
attention;  he  was  a  real  force  in  the  directing  of  the  Atlantic 
element  of  the  American  reading  public  toward  the  rising  new 
school  of  authors,  but  aside  from  this  his  criticism  is  in  no  way 
significant.  His  art  and  his  enthusiasm  were  in  his  sketches — 
American  sketches  now  with  the  light  of  Europe  over  them. 
Their  Wedding  Journey  is  an  American  counterpart  to  Italian 
Journeys,  and  it  is  made  coherent  by  introducing  a  married  pair 
on  their  bridal  tour  and  describing  places  and  manners  as  they 
became  acquainted  with  them.  The  interest  comes  not  at  all 
from  the  narrative ;  it  comes  from  the  setting.  It  is  an  American 
sentimental  journey  over  which  the  author  strives  to  throw  the 
soft  light  of  European  romance.  Rochester  was  like  Verona; 
and  Quebec — "on  what  perverse  pretext  was  it  not  some  ancient 
town  of  Normandy  ? ' ' 

Sketches,  pictures  of  life,  studies  of  manners,  these  are  the 
object  of  the  book.  The  author  is  not  writing  to  record  incidents, 
for  there  are  few  incidents  to  record.  "That  which  they  [the 
bridal  pair]  found  the  most  difficult  of  management,"  he  declares, 
4  *  was  the  want  of  incident  for  the  most  part  of  the  time ;  and  I 
who  write  their  history  might  also  sink  under  it,  but  that  I  am 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  205 

supported  by  the  fact  that  it  is  so  typical  in  this  respect.  I  even 
imagine  the  ideal  reader  for  whom  one  writes  as  yawning  over 
these  barren  details  with  the  life-like  weariness  of  an  actual 
traveling  companion  of  theirs. " 

As  a  story  from  the  standpoint  of  Bonner's  New  York  Ledger, 
then  in  the  high  tide  of  its  prosperity,  it  was  dreary  reading. 
But  it  was  true  in  every  line,  true  of  background,  arid  true  to  the 
facts  of  human  life  as  Howells  saw  those  facts.  * '  Ah !  poor  real 
life,  which  I  love,"  he  exclaims,  after  a  minute  sketch  of  a  com 
mercial  traveler  and  some  loud-voiced  girls  on  the  train,  "can  I 
make  others  share  the  delight  I  share  in  thy  foolish  and  insipid 
face?" 

But  this  earlier  Howells  gives  us  more  than  real  life :  he  gives 
us  real  life  touched  with  the  glow  of  poetry,  for  the  poet  in  How 
ells  died  a  lingering  death.  It  seems  as  if  novel-writing  had  come 
to  him,  as  he  declares  all  of  his  literary  life  had  come,  almost 
without  his  willing  it.  It  grew  gradually  and  naturally  out  of 
his  sketch-writing.  In  his  early  sketch  books  he  had  studied 
places  and  "men  in  their  actuality,"  and  he  would  now  make 
his  sketches  more  comprehensive  and  bind  them  with  a  thread 
of  narrative.  A  sketch  like  "A  Day's  Outing"  in  Suburban 
Sketches,  and  a  "novel"  like  Their  Wedding  Journey  differ  only 
in  the  single  element  of  quantity.  A  Chance  Acquaintance,  the 
record  of  another  sentimental  journey,  with  its  careful  sketches 
along  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Saguenay,  and  at  Quebec,  and  its 
Pride-and-Prejudice-like  study  of  a  typical  Bostonian  and  a 
Western  girl,  has  more  of  story  than  the  earlier  book,  but  it  is  still 
a  sketch  book  rather  than  a  novel.  Private  Theatricals,  his 
fourth  essay  at  fiction,  is  so  minute  a  study  of  a  particular  sum 
mer  boarding  house  and  its  patrons  that  it  was  never  allowed  to 
get  beyond  serial  publication,  at  least  one  can  think  of  no  other 
reason  for  its  suppression,  and  The  Undiscovered  Country  might 
be  entitled  Sketches  Among  the  Spiritualists  and  the  Shakers. 

The  Howells  of  this  earlier  period  has  little  of  story  and  little 
of  problem.  His  object  is  to  present  men  and  manners  "in  their 
actuality."  A  Foregone  Conclusion,  the  most  idyllic  of  his 
novels,  in  reality  is  an  added  chapter  to  Venetian  Life,  written 
in  the  retrospect  of  later  years.  The  golden  light  of  Venice  is 
over  it,  a  Venice  now  more  mellow  and  poetic  because  it  is  a  part 
of  the  author's  vanishing  youth — his  alma  mater,  as  it  were; 


206  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

more  golden  every  year.     The  springtime  is  in  every  page  of  it , 

The  day  was  one  of  those  that  can  come  to  the  world  only  in  early 
June  at  Venice.  The  heaven  was  without  a  cloud,  but  a  blue  haze 
made  mystery  of  the  horizon  where  the  lagoon  and  sky  met  unseen. 
The  breath  of  the  sea  bathed  in  freshness  the  city  at  whose  feet  her 
tides  sparkled  and  slept.  .  .  .  The  long  garland  of  vines  that  festoons 
all  Italy  seemed  to  begin  in  the  neighboring  orchards;  the  meadows 
wax fil  their  long  grasses  in  the  sun,  and  broke  in  poppies  as  the  sea- 
waves  break  in  iridescent  spray;  the  poplars  marched  in  stately  pro 
cession  on  either  side  of  the  straight,  white  road  to  Padua,  till  they 
vanished  in  the  long  perspective. 

One  loves  to  linger  over  this  early  Howells,  despite  all  his  dif- 
fuseness  and  his  lack  of  dramatic  power.  One  knows  that  there 
is  a  fatal  weakness  in  the  attempted  tragedy  of  the  priest,  that 
the  tale  does  not  grip  and  compel  and  haunt  the  soul  as  such  a 
tale  must  if  it  be  worth  telling  at  all,  that  its  ending  is  sprawling 
and  conventional,  and  yet  one  cannot  but  feel  that  there  is  in  it, 
as  there  is  in  all  of  the  work  of  this  earlier  period  of  the  author's 
life,  youth  and  freshness  and  beauty — and  poetry.  These  earlier 
studies  are  not  merely  cold  observations  upon  life  and  society, 
analysis  as  of  reactions  in  a  test-tube ;  these  are  the  creations  of  a 
young  poet,  a  romancer,  a  dreamer:  the  later  manner  was  an 
artificial  acquirement  like  the  taste  for  olives. 

IX 

Howells 's  second  literary  period  begins  with  the  year  1881 
when  he  resigned  the  editorship  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  and 
settled  in  the  country  at  Belmont  to  devote  all  his  time  to  the 
writing  of  fiction  for  the  Century  magazine.  During  the  decade 
that  followed  he  produced  his  two  strongest  works,  A  Modern 
Instance,  and  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,  and  also  A  Woman's 
Reason,  The  Minister's  Charge,  Indian  Summer,  and  others. 
He  had  found  his  life  work.  During  the  earlier  period  he  had 
been,  as  it  were,  experimenting;  he  had  published  fifteen  books, 
only  five  of  which  were  novels,  but  it  was  clear  now  that  the  five 
pointed  the  way  he  was  to  go. 

He  began  now  with  larger  canvas  and  with  more  sweep  and 
freedom.  No  more  idyllic  sketches  now:  his  business  was  to 
make  studies  at  full  length  of  American  character  and  American 
manners.  He  would  do  for  New  England  what  Jane  Austen 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  207 

had  done  for  her  narrow  little  corner  of  old  England.  He  too 
had  "the  exquisite  touch,"  to  use  the  words  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
"which  renders  ordinary  commonplace  things  and  characters  in 
teresting  from  the  truth  of  the  description  and  the  sentiment." 
Like  her  he  would  bring  no  message  and  analyze  no  passion  more 
intense  than  the  perplexity  of  a  maiden  with  two  lovers ;  and  like 
her  he  would  deal  not  with  the  problems  of  the  soul  of  man,  but 
with  the  manners  of  a  small  province. 

His  essay  on  Henry  James  in  the  Century  of  November,  1882, 
the  proclamation  of  the  new  Howells,  raised  a  tempest  of  dis 
cussion  that  did  not  subside  for  a  decade.  ' '  The  stories, ' '  he  de 
clared,  * 4  were  all  told  long  ago ;  and  now  we  want  to  know  merely 
what  the  novelist  thinks  about  persons  and  situations. "  "  The  art 
of  fiction  has  become  a  finer  art  in  our  day  than  it  was  with 
Dickens  and  Thackeray.  We  could  not  suffer  the  confidential 
attitude  of  the  latter  now,  nor  the  mannerism  of  the  former,  any 
more  than  we  could  endure  the  prolixity  of  Richardson  or  the 
coarseness  of  Fielding.  These  great  men  are  of  the  past — they 
and  their  methods  and  interests;  even  Trollope  and  Reade  are 
not  of  the  present. ' '  And  of  the  new  novel — ' '  The  moving  acci 
dent  is  certainly  not  its  trade ;  and  it  prefers  to  avoid  all  manner 
of  dire  catastrophes."  James  he  classified  not  as  a  story-teller, 
but  as  a  character-painter,  and  he  proceeded  to  set  forth  the 
thesis  that  "the  novelist's  main  business  is  to  possess  his  reader 
with  a  due  conception  of  his  characters  and  the  situations  in  which 
they  find  themselves.  If  he  does  more  or  less  than  this  he  equally 
fails."  "It  is,  after  all,  what  a  writer  has  to  say  rather  than 
what  he  has  to  tell  that  we  care  for  now-a-days. ' ' 

But  the  Howells  of  the  eighties  was  not  ready  yet  for  grounds 
so  advanced  when  it  came  to  his  own  work.  The  romancer  within 
him  died  hard.  "I  own,"  he  admitted,  "that  I  like  a  finished 
story,"  and  he  proceeded  to  tell  finished  stories  with  plots  and 
moving  accidents  and  culminating  ends.  A  Woman's  Reason 
is  as  elaborate  in  plot  and  incident  as  a  novel  by  Mrs.  Braddon, 
and  it  has  as  conventional  an  ending.  The  heroine,  apparently 
deserted  by  her  lover,  is  forced  to  live  in  a  humble  boarding 
house  where  she  is  wooed  persistently  by  a  member  of  the  Eng 
lish  nobility.  She  is  true,  however,  to  her  old  lover,  who  after 
having  lived  years  on  a  desert  island  which  for  a  time  we  are  per 
mitted  to  share  with  him,  returns  at  last  to  rescue  her,  and  the 


208  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

marriage  crowns  the  book  with  gold.  A  Modern  Instance  and 
The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,  undoubtedly  his  strongest  work,  are 
first  of  all  stories,  and  to  the  great  majority  of  all  who  have  ever 
read  them  they  have  been  only  stories.  In  other  words,  they  have 
been  read  for  what  the  author  had  to  tell,  and  not  necessarily  for 
what  he  has  had  to  say. 

He  has  been  careful  always  that  his  tales  end  well,  as  careful 
indeed  as  an  E.  P.  Roe.  The  ending  of  A  Foregone  Conclusion 
and  of  The  Minister's  Charge  fly  in  the  very  face  of  realism. 
He  is  bold  in  his  theories,  but  in  the  application  of  these  theories  to 
his  own  work  he  has  an  excess  of  timidity.  Realism  should  flout 
the  conventionalities ;  it  should  have  regard  only  for  the  facts  in 
the  case,  affect  the  reader  as  they  may,  but  Howells  had  continu 
ally  on  his  mind  the  readers  of  the  Atlantic  and  the  nerves  of 
the  "Brahmins."  The  end  of  An  Imperative  Duty,  for  instance, 
^ould  have  come  only  as  a  concession  to  the  conventional  reader. 
He  allows  the  woman  with  the  negro  blood  to  marry  the  man 
she  loves,  and  then  hastens  to  say  that  they  lived  the  rest  of  their 
lives  in  Italy,  where  such  matches  are  not  criticized  and  where  the 
woman  passed  everywhere  as  an  Italian.  It  would  have  been 
stronger  art  to  have  made  her  rise  superior  to  her  selfishness> 
the  soul  triumphant  over  the  flesh,  and  refuse  to  marry  the  man, 
and  to  do  it  for  the  sole  compelling  reason  that  she  loved  him. 

The  much-discussed  realism  of  the  Howells  of  the  eighties  was 
simply  a  demand  for  truth,  an  insistence  that  all  characters  and 
backgrounds  be  drawn  from  nature,  and  that  no  sequence  of 
events  be  given  that  might  not  happen  in  the  life  of  the  average 
man.  His  stories  therefore,  like  James's,  move  slowly.  There 
is  much  in  them  of  what  is  technically  called  "lumber" — ma 
terial  that  is  brought  in  for  other  reasons  than  to  advance  the 
progress  of  the  story.  Every  character  is  minutely  described; 
cravats  and  waistcoats,  hats  and  watch-charms,  dresses  and  furbe 
lows,  are  dwelt  upon  with  thoroughness.  The  author  stops  the 
story  to  describe  a  carpet,  a  wardrobe,  a  peculiarity  of  gesture. 
A  page  is  taken  up  with  a  description  of  the  heroine's  drawing- 
room,  another  is  given  to  the  view  from  her  window.  As  a  re* 
suit  we  get  from  the  reading  of  the  book,  in  spite  of  our  impa 
tience  at  its  slow  movement,  a  feeling  of  actuality.  Hartley 
Hubbard  and  Mareia  seem  at  the  end  like  people  we  have  known ; 
we  are  sure  we  should  recognize  Squire  Gaylord  even  if  we  met 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  209 

him  on  Tremont  Street.  Silas  Lapham,  the  typical  self-made 
American  of  the  era,  and  his  wife  and  daughters,  are  speaking 
likenesses,  done  with  sympathy;  for  the  early  years  of  Howells 
had  enabled  him,  unlike  James,  to  enter  into  bourgeois  life  with 
comprehension.  Everywhere  portraits  done  with  a  thousand 
careful  touches — New  England  types  largely  drawn  against  a 
minute  background  of  manners. 

It  cannot  fail  that  these  novels,  even  like  those  of  Jane  Aus 
ten,  will  be  valued  in  years  to  come  as  historical  documents.  As 
a  picture  of  the  externals  of  the  era  they  portray  there  is  nothing 
to  compare  with  them.  The  Boston  of  the  seventies,  gone  now 
as  completely  as  the  Boston  of  the  Revolution,  lives  in  these 
pages.  Every  phase  of  its  external  life  has  been  dwelt  upon: 
its  underworld  and  its  lodging  houses  and  its  transformed  coun 
try  boys  in  The  Minister's  Charge;  the  passing  of  the  old  Boston 
of  the  India  trade  days  and  the  helplessness  of  the  daughters 
of  the  patricians  in  A  Woman's  Reason;  literary  and  journalistic 
Boston  in  A  Modern  Instance;  the  high  and  low  of  Boston  so 
ciety  in  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham;  the  entry  of  woman  into  the 
learned  professions  in  Dr.  Breen's  Practice  f  and  so  on  and  on — 
he  has  covered  the  field  with  the  faithfulness  of  a  sociological  his 
torian.  He  is  a  painter  of  manners,  evermore  manners. 

As  to  whether  or  not  he  touched  the  soul  of  New  England  as 
did  Rose  Terry  Cooke,  for  instance,  is  another  question.  His 
knowledge  of  the  region  was  an  acquirement,  not  a  birthright. 
The  surface  of  its  society,  the  peculiarities  of  its  manners  and  its 
point  of  view,  the  unusual  traits  of  its  natives,  these  he  saw  with 
the  sharpened  eyes  of  an  outsider,  but  he  never  became  so  much 
a  part  of  what  he  wrote  that  he  could  treat  it,  as  Mrs.  Wilkins- 
Freeman  treated  it,  from  the  heart  outward.  The  thing  perhaps 
that  impressed  him  first  and  most  deeply  as  he  came  a  stranger 
into  the  provincial  little  area  was  the  so-called  New  England  con 
science,  "grim  aftercrop  of  Puritanism,  that  hypochondria  of 
the  soul  into  which  the  Puritanism  of  her  father's  race  had  sick 
ened  in  her,  and  which  so  often  seems  to  satisfy  its  crazy  claim 
upon  conscience  by  enforcing  some  aimless  act  of  self  sacrifice. ' ' 12 
All  of  his  New  England  characters  have  this  as  their  humor, 
using  the  word  in  the  Ben  Jonsonian  sense.  Novels  like  A 

12  An  Imperative  Duty. 


210  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Woman's  Reason  and  The  Minister's  Charge  turn  upon  it.  With 
Hawthorne  the  thing  became  a  moving  power,  a  tragic  center  of 
his  art  that  could  move  the  soul  to  pity  or  to  terror,  but  Howells 
treats  it  never  with  the  sympathy  of  comprehension.  He  never 
so  treats  it  that  we  feel  it;  he  never  shows  us  a  character  pos 
sessed  by  its  power  until  it  is  driven  over  the  brink  of  tragedy. 
It  is  simply  one  of  the  details  that  make  up  the  portrait  of  a 
New  Englander,  as  in  The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook,  the  maiden 
cries  out  at  the  happy  moment  when  her  lover  declares  himself: 
"  'Oh,  I  knew  it,  I  knew  it,'  cried  Lydia.  And  then,  as  he 
caught  her  to  him  at  last,  '  Oh — Oh — are  you  sure  it  's  right  ? '  ' 
It  is  an  element  of  manners,  a  picturesque  peculiarity,  a  "hu- 


In  his  first  period  Howells  was  poetic  and  spontaneous,  in  his 
second  he  was  deliberate  and  artistic,  in  his  third  he  was  scien- 
tiiic  and  ethical.  The  last  period  began  in  a  general  way  at  the 
opening  of  the  nineties  with  the  publication,  perhaps,  of  A 
Hazard  of  New  Fortunes.  He  had  spent  another  year  in  Eu 
rope,  and  in  1886  had  removed  to  New  York  to  do  editorial  work 
for  the  Harpers. 

Now  began  what  undoubtedly  was  the  most  voluminous  lit 
erary  career  in  the  history  of  American  literature.  He  took 
charge  of  the  "Easy  Chair "  in  Harper's  Monthly,  writing  for 
it  material  equivalent  to  a  volume  a  year,  and  in  addition  he 
poured  out  novels,  books  of  travel,  sketches,  reviews,  juveniles, 
autobiographies,  comedies,  farces,  essays,  editings,  biographies — 
a  mass  of  material  equaled  in  bulk  only  by  the  writings  of  men 
like  Southey  or  Dumas.  He  had  learned  his  art  with  complete 
ness.  The  production  of  clear  and  precise  and  brilliant  English 
had  become  second  nature,  and  he  could  pour  it  out  steadily  and 
with  speed. 

His  novels  more  and  more  now  began  to  conform  to  his  realis 
tic  theories.  The  story  sank  gradually  from  prominence,  and 
gradually  analysis  and  scientific  purpose  took  its  place.  Annie 
Kilburn,  1888,  may  be  taken  as  the  point  of  transition.  The 
story  could  be  told  in  a  single  chapter.  There  is  no  love-making, 
no  culminating  marriage  or  engagement,  no  passion,  no  crime, 
no  violence  greater  than  the  flashing  of  eyes,  no  mystery,  no 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  211 

climax.  It  is  the  afternoon  talk  of  the  ladies  of  a  rural  parish. 
For  chapter  after  chapter  they  babble  on,  assisted  now  and  then 
by  the  doctor  or  the  minister  or  the  lawyer  who  drops  in  for  a  cup 
of  tea.  As  in  the  work  of  James,  one  may  turn  a  dozen  pages 
and  find  the  same  group  still  refining  upon  the  same  theme  over 
the  same  tea-cups.  The  object  of  the  author  is  not  progress  in 
events,  but  progress  in  characterization  and  ethical  analysis. 
Through  the  mouths  of  these  talkers  he  is  discussing  the  problems 
of  the  rural  church  and  the  rural  community.  He  attempts  to 
settle  nothing  finally,  but  he  sets  the  problem  before  the  reader 
in  all  its  phases,  and  the  reader  may  come  to  his  own  conclusion. 

This  novel  is  typical  of  all  the  fiction  of  the  later  Howells. 
Everywhere  now  problems — moral,  social,  psychological — prob 
lems  discussed  by  means  of  endless  dialogue.  A  Hazard  of  New 
Fortunes  is  almost  as  long  as  Pamela,  and  when  it  is  ended  there 
is  no  logical  reason  for  the  ending  save  that  the  novelist  has  used 
the  space  allotted  to  him.  Another  volume  could  easily  have 
been  added  telling  of  the  experiences  of  the  Dreyfooses  in  Eu 
rope.  The  novelist  may  stop  at  any  point,  for  he  is  not  telling 
a  story,  he  is  painting  character,  and  manners  and  developing 
a  thesis.  In  Annie  Kilburn  the  effect  of  the  sudden  ending  is 
disconcerting.  It  is  like  the  cutting  off  of  a  yard  of  cloth. 

Howells  had  passed  under  the  powerful  influence  of  Tolstoy. 
1 1  As  much  as  one  merely  human  being  can  help  another, ' '  he  de 
clares,  "I  believe  that  he  has  helped  me;  he  has  not  influenced 
me  in  esthetics  only,  but  in  ethics,  too,  so  that  I  can  never  again 
see  life  in  the  way  I  saw  it  before  I  knew  him."  It  is  absurd, 
however,  to  think  that  any  influence  could  fundamentally  have 
changed  the  art  of  a  man  like  Howells  in  his  fiftieth  year.  What 
Tolstoy  did  for  him  was  to  confirm  and  deepen  tendencies  in  his 
work  that  already  had  become  established  and  to  turn  his  mind 
from  the  contemplation  exclusively  of  manners  and  men  in  their 
actuality  to  problems  ethical  and  social.  He  gave  to  him  a  mes 
sage  and  a  wider  view  of  art.  ''What  I  feel  sure  is  that  I  can 
never  look  at  life  in  the  mean  and  sordid  way  that  I  did  before 
I  read  Tolstoy."  "He  has  been  to  me  that  final  consciousness, 
which  he  speaks  of  so  wisely  in  his  essay  on  '  Life. '  ' ' 

As  an  example  of  this  final  Howells  we  may  read  The  Landlord 
of  Lion's  Head,  or  The  Traveler  from  Altruria,  or  The  Quality 
of  Mercy,  which  are  not  so  much  novels  as  minute  studies  of 


212  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

social  or  moral  phases  of  the  times,  illustrated  by  means  of  a 
particular  case  and  made  clear  by  voluminous  details.  Minor 
characters  serve  as  a  chorus  as  the  case  proceeds,  and  the  final 
effect  is  sennonic  rather  than  novelistic.  The  poetic  and  the 
esthetic  have  yielded  to  the  ethical  and  socialistic.  In  America 
every  art  ends  at  last  in  a  sermon. 

XI 

The  realism  of  Howells  is  of  the  eighteenth-century  type  rather 
than  the  nineteenth.  It  is  classicism,  as  Henry  James's  is  classi 
cism.  His  affinity  is  with  Richardson  rather  than  with  Zola. 
He  was  timid  and  conscious  of  his  audience.  He  had  approached 
Boston  with  too  much  of  reverence;  the  "tradition  of  the  At 
lantic"  lay  heavily  upon  him  during  all  of  his  earlier  period; 
the  shadow  of  Lowell  was  upon  his  page  and  he  wrote  as  in  his 
presence;  the  suggestive  words  in  a  review  of  one  of  his  earlier 
books  by  the  North  American  Review,  final  voice  of  New  England 
refinement,  compelled  him:  "He  has  the  incapacity  to  be  com 
mon.'*  Thus  his  early  writings  had  in  them  nothing  of  the 
1  Western  audacity  and  newness.  A  realistic  reaction  from  the 
romantic  school  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  was  everywhere 
— on  the  Continent,  in  England,  in  America — changing  literary 
standards;  Howells  felt  it  and  yielded  to  it,  but  he  yielded  only 
as  Longfellow  would  have  yielded  had  he  been  of  his  generation, 
pr  Holmes,  or  Lowell.  He  yielded  to  a  modified  realism,  a  timid 
and  refined  realism,  a  realism  that  would  not  offend  the  sensi- 
.bilities  of  Boston,  the  "Boston,"  to  quote  from  A  Chance  Ac 
quaintance,  "that  would  rather  perish  by  fire  and  sword  than 
to  be  suspected  of  vulgarity;  a  critical,  fastidious,  reluctant 
Boston,  dissatisfied  with  the  rest  of  the  hemisphere."  He  records 
scarcely  a  crime  in  all  his  volumes :  he  has  not  in  his  voluminous 
gallery  a  woman  who  ever  broke  a  law  more  serious  than  indis 
cretions  at  an  afternoon  tea.  As  a  result  there  is  no  remorse,  no 
problems  of  life  in  the  face  of  broken  law,  no  decisions  that  in 
volve  life  and  death  and  the  agony  that  is  sharper  than  death. 
In  his  pages  life  is  an  endless  comedy  where  highly  conventional 
and  very  refined  people  meet  day  after  day  and  talk,  and  dream 
of  Europe,  and  make  love  in  the  leisurely,  old-fashioned  way. 
and  marry  happily  in  the  end  the  lover  of  their  choice. 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  213 

He  is  as  tedious  as  Richardson  and  at  times  nearly  as  vol 
uminous.  He  uses  page  after  page  of  The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook 
to  tell  what  might  have  been  told  in  a  single  sentence.  The 
grandfather  and  the  aunt  set  the  general  situation  before  the 
reader,  then  the  aunt  and  the  clergymen,  then  the  two  passengers, 
then  the  passengers  and  the  captain,  then  the  heroine  and  the 
cabin  boy  in  six  pages,  and  finally  at  the  very  end  of  the  book 
the  heroine  and  the  transplanted  New  England  woman  in  Venice. 
Art  is  ''nothing  too  much."  We  feel  instinctively  that  the  au 
thor  is  making  a  mountain  out  of  a  molehill  because  he  believes 
his  readers  will  expect  him  to  do  it.  To  Bostonians  he  believes  it 
would  be  inexpressibly  shocking  for  a  girl  to  sail  for  Europe  the 
only  woman  on  board  the  ship,  though  she  be  under  the  express 
care  of  the  fatherly  old  sea  captain  and  though  two  of  the  three 
other  passengers  are  Boston  gentlemen.  The  perturbation  of 
these  two  model  young  men,  their  heroic  nerving  of  themselves  to 
live  through  the  experience,  their  endless  refinings  and  analyzings 
of  the  situation,  and  all  of  their  subsequent  doings  are  simply 
Howells 's  conception  of  "the  quality  of  Boston." 

It  is  Richardsonism ;  it  is  realism  of  the  Pamela  order;  it  is 
a  return  to  the  eighteenth  century  with  its  reverence  for  respecta 
bility  and  the  conventions,  its  dread  of  letting  itself  go  and  mak 
ing  scenes,  its  avoidance  of  all  that  would  shock  the  nerves  of 
the  refined  circle  for  which  it  wrote.  The  kinship  of  Howells 
with  Richardson  indeed  is  closer  even  than  that  between  Howells 
and  James.  They  approach  life  from  the  same  angle.  Both 
profess  to  deal  with  men  and  manners  in  their  actuality,  both 
would  avoid  the  moving  accident  and  discard  from  their  fictions 
all  that  is  fantastic  or  improbable;  both  would  keep  closely 
within  the  circle  of  the  highly  respectable  middle-class  society 
of  which  they  were  a  part ;  both  professed  to  work  with  no  other 
than  a  moral  purpose;  and  both  would  reveal  the  inner  life  of 
their  characters  only  as  the  reader  might  infer  it  after  having 
read  endless  descriptions  and  interminable  conversations;  and 
both  wrote,  as  Tennyson  termed  Pamela  and  Clarissa,  "great 
still  books ' '  that  flow  on  and  on  with  sluggish  current  to  no  par 
ticular  destination. 

Howells  is  less  dramatic  than  Richardson,  yet  one  may  turn 
pages  and  chapters  of  his  novels  into  dramatic  form  by  supplying 
to  the  dialogue  the  names  of  the  speakers.  Howells,  indeed,  ac- 


214  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

quired  a  faculty  in  the  construction  of  sparkling  dialogue  so  bril 
liant  that  he  exercised  it  in  the  production  of  a  surprising  num 
ber  of  so-called  comedies:  A  Counterfeit  Presentiment,  The 
Mouse-Trap,  The  Elevator,  and  the  like,  dramatic  in  form  but 
essentially  novelistic  in  all  things  else.  His  genius  was  not  dra 
matic.  He  evolves  his  characters  and  situations  slowly.  The 
swift  rush  and  culminating  plot  of  the  drama  are  beyond  him. 
His  comedies  are  chapters  of  dialogue  from  unwritten  novels — 
studies  in  character  and  manners  by  means  of  conversations. 

Richardson's  novels  centered  about  women;  they  were  written 
for  women ;  they  were  praised  first  of  all  for  their  minute  knowl 
edge  of  the  feminine  heart.  There  was  indeed  in  his  own  nature 
a  feminine  element  that  made  him  the  absolute  opposite  of  a 
masculine  type,  for  instance  like  Fielding.  Howells  also  centered 
his  work  about  women.  In  one  of  the  earliest  reviews  of  his  work 
is  the  sentence  "his  knowledge  of  women  is  simply  marvelous." 
Like  his  earlier  prototype,  he  has  expended  upon  them  a  world 
of  analysis  and  dissection  and  description.  With  what  result? 
To  one  who  has  read  all  of  his  fictions  straight  through  there 
emerges  at  last  from  the  helpless,  fluttering,  hesitating,  rapturous 
and  dejected,  paradoxical,  April-hoping,  charming  throng  of  his 
heroines — Mrs.  March,  Kitty  Ellison,  Lydia,  Marcia,  Mrs.  Camp 
bell,  Mrs.  Roberts,  Helen  Harkness,  Florida,  Mrs.  Lapham  and 
her  daughters,  Dr.  Breen,  Clara  Kingsbury,  Rhoda  Aldgate,  An 
nie  Kilburn,  Mrs.  Dreyfoos  and  the  hundred  others — there 
emerges  a  single  woman,  the  Howells  type,  as  distinct  a  creature 
as  the  Richardson  type,  and  as  one  compares  the  two  he  is  startled 
to  find  them  almost  identical.  The  Richardson  feminine  is  a 
trembling,  innocent,  helpless  creature  pursued  by  men ;  the  How 
ells  type  is  the  same  woman  transported  into  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  inconsequent,  temperamental,  often  bird-like  and  charming, 
electric  at  repartee,  pursued  by  men  and  fleeing  flutteringly  from 
them,  yet  dependent  upon  them  for  her  very  existence.  In  all 
of  these  fictions  there  is  scarcely  a  feminine  figure,  at  least  in  a 
leading  role,  of  whom  her  sex  may  be  proud.  His  masculine 
characters  are  many  of  them  strong  and  admirable,  even  to  the 
minor  figures  like  Mr.  Harkness  and  Captain  Butler  and  Squire 
Gaylord.  He  has,  perhaps,  created  two  characters — Silas  Lap- 
ham  and  Bartly  Hubbard — to  place  beside  Natty  Bumppo,  and 
Uncle  Remus,  and  Yuba  Bill,  Sam  Lawson,  Colonel  Sellers,  and 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  215 

a  few  others,  as  permanent  additions  to  the  gallery  of  American 
types.  But  with  all  his  studies  of  women  he  has  added  nothing 
original,  no  type  that  can  be  accepted  as  characteristic  or  ad 
mirable. 

XII 

The  art  of  Howells  is  essentially  of  this  present  world.  Of 
the  soul  of  man  and  the  higher  life  of  his  dreams  and  aspirations 
he  has  nothing  to  tell.  He  writes  of  Hawthorne:  "In  all  his 
books  there  is  the  line  of  thoughts  that  we  think  of  only  in  the 
presence  of  the  mysteries  of  life  and  death.  It  is  not  his  fault 
that  this  is  not  intelligence,  that  it  knots  the  brow  in  sore  doubt 
rather  than  shapes  the  lips  to  utterance  of  the  things  that  can 
never  be  said."  Howells  would  ignore  such  themes.  He  is  of 
the  age  of  doubt,  the  classical  age,  rather  than  of  the  age  of  faith 
that  sees  and  creates.  Lightly  he  skims  over  the  surface  of  ma 
terial  things,  noting  the  set  of  a  garment  or  the  shade  of  a  cravat, 
recording  rather  than  creating,  interested  in  life  only  as  it  is 
affected  by  manners,  sketching  with  rapid  pen  characters  evolved 
by  a  provincial  environment,  tracing  with  leisurely  thoroughness 
the  love  story  of  a  boy  and  girl,  recording  the  April  changes  of  a 
maiden's  heart,  the  gossip  of  an  afternoon  tea — a  feminine  task 
one  would  suppose,  work  for  a  Fanny  Burney,  a  Maria  Edge- 
worth  or  a  Mrs.  Gaskell,  no  work  indeed  for  a  great  novelist  at  the 
dawn  of  a  new  period  in  a  new  land.  While  the  West,  of  which 
his  earlier  life  was  a  part,  was  crashing  out  a  new  civilization; 
while  the  air  was  electric  with  the  rush  and  stir  of  rising  cities ; 
while  a  new  star  of  hope  for  the  nations  was  rising  in  the  West ; 
while  a  mighty  war  of  freedom  was  waging  about  him  and  the 
soul  of  man  was  being  tried  as  by  fire,  Howells,  like  Clarissa  Har- 
lowe,  is  interested  "in  her  ruffles,  in  her  gloves,  her  samplers, 
her  aunts  and  uncles." 

And  yet  even  as  we  class  him  as  a  painter  of  manners  we 
remember  that  America  has  no  manners  in  the  narrower  sense  of 
the  term.  New  England  had  the  nearest  approach  to  manners, 
yet  New  England,  all  must  admit,  was  wholly  imitative ;  she  was 
enamoured  of  Europe.  Howells  has  another  side  to  his  classicism, 
one  utterly  wanting  in  Richardson — he  is  a  satirist  of  manners,  a 
critic  and  a  reformer.  Richardson  took  English  manners  as  he 
took  the  English  Constitution  and  the  English  language  as  a 


216  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

matter  of  course.  He  never  dreamed  of  changing  the  order  01 
things;  he  would  only  portray  it  and  teach  individuals  how  best 
to  deport  themselves  under  its  laws.  Howells,  after  his  first  awe 
of  New  England  had  subsided,  became  critical.  He  would 
change  manners ;  he  would  portray  them  that  men  by  seeing  them 
would  learn  their  ridiculousness — in  short,  he  became,  what  every 
classicist  must  sooner  or  later  become,  a  satirist — a  chafer  under 
the  conventions  that  bind  him, — a  critic. 

Howells  then  is  the  rare  figure  of  a  lyric  poet  and  a  romanticist 
who  deliberately  forced  himself  into  classicism  as  a  result  of  his 
environment.  His  earlier  works  are  the  record  of  a  transition — 
enthusiasm,  poetic  glow,  romance,  tempered  more  and  more  with 
scientific  exactness  and  coldness  and  skill.  Like  James,  he  learned 
his  profession  with  infinite  toil;  like  James,  he  formed  himself 
upon  masters  and  then  defended  his  final  position  with  a  sum 
mary  of  the  laws  of  his  art.  Like  James,  he  schooled  himself  to 
distrust  the  emotions  and  work  wholly  from  the  intellect.  The 
result  in  the  case  of  both,  in  the  case  of  all  classicists  in  fact,  has 
been  that  the  reader  is  touched  only  in  the  intellect.  One  smiles 
at  the  flashes  of  wit ;  one  seldom  laughs.  No  one  ever  shed  a  tear 
over  a  page  either  of  Howells  or  James.  One  admires  their  skill ; 
one  takes  a  certain  pleasure  in  the  lifelikeness  of  the  characters 
— especially  those  of  Howells — but  cold  lifelikeness  is  not  the  su 
preme  object  of  art;  manners  and  outward  behavior  are  but  a 
small  part  of  life.  Unless  the  novelist  can  lay  hold  of  his  reader's 
heart  and  walk  with  him  with  sympathy  and  conviction  he  must 
be  content  to  be  ranked  at  last  as  a  mere  showman  and  not  a 
voice,  not  a  leader,  not  a  prophet. 

XIII 

Howells,  like  James,  was  peculiarly  a  product  of  the  later  nine 
teenth  century  and  of  the  wave  of  democracy  in  literature  that 
came  both  to  Europe  and  America  as  a  reflex  from  the  romanti 
cism  of  Scott  and  Coleridge  and  the  German  Sturm  und  Drang. 
Had  he  lived  a  generation  earlier  he  would  have  been  a  poet  of 
the  Dr.  Holmes  type,  an  Irving,  or  a  George  William  Curtis. 
The  spirit  of  the  times  and  a  combination  of  circumstances  made 
of  him  the  leader  of  the  depicters  of  democracy  in  America. 
From  the  vantage  point  of  the  three  leading  magazines  of  the 
period  he  was  enabled  to  command  a  wide  audience  and  to  exert 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  217 

enormous  influence.  His  beautiful  style  disarmed  criticism  and 
concealed  the  leanness  of  his  output.  Had  he  been  less  timid, 
had  he  dared  like  Mark  Twain  or  Whitman  to  forget  the  fastidi 
ous  circle  within  which  he  lived,  and  write  with  truth  and  hon 
esty  and  sincerity  the  great  nation-wide  story  with  its  passion, 
its  tragedy,  its  comedy,  its  tremendous  significance  in  the  history 
of  humanity,  he  might  have  led  American  fiction  into  fields  far 
broader  than  those  into  which  it  finally  settled. 

In  the  process  of  the  new  literary  discovery  of  America  How- 
ells  's  part  was  to  discover  the  prosaic  ordinary  man  of  the  middle 
class  and  to  make  him  tolerable  in  fiction.  He  was  the  leading 
force  in  the  reaction  against  the  Sylvanus  Cobb  type  of  romance 
that  was  so  powerful  in  America  in  the  early  seventies.  He  made 
the  new  realism  respectable.  All  at  once  America  found  that  she 
was  full  of  material  for  fiction.  Hawthorne  had  taught  that  the 
new  world  was  barren  of  material  for  the  novelist,  Cooper  had 
limited  American  fiction  to  the  period  of  the  settlement  and  the 
Revolution;  Longfellow  and  Taylor  had  turned  to  romantic  Eu 
rope.  After  Howells's  minute  studies  of  the  New  England  mid 
dle  class,  every  provincial  environment  in  America  produced  its 
recorder,  and  the  novel  of  locality  for  a  time  dominated  American 
literature. 

In  another  and  more  decided  way,  perhaps,  Howells  was 
a  potent  leader  during  the  period.  He  has  stood  for  finished 
art,  for  perfection  of  style,  for  literary  finish,  for  perfect  Eng 
lish  in  an  age  of  slovenliness  and  slang.  No  writer  of  the  period 
has  excelled  him  in  accuracy  of  diction,  in  brilliancy  of  expres 
sion,  in  unfailing  purity  of  style.  There  is  an  eighteenth-cen 
tury  fastidiousness  about  every  page  that  he  has  written. 

The  tribute  of  Mark  Twain  is  none  too  strong:  "For  forty 
years  his  English  has  been  to  me  a  continual  delight  and  aston 
ishment.  In  the  sustained  exhibition  of  certain  great  qualities — 
clearness,  compression,  verbal  exactness,  and  unforced  and  seem 
ingly  unconscious  felicity  of  phrasing — he  is,  in  my  belief,  without 
peer  in  the  English-speaking  world.  Sustained.  I  entrench  my 
self  behind  that  protecting  word.  There  are  others  who  exhibit 
those  qualities  as  greatly  as  does  he,  but  only  by  intervaled  dis 
tributions  of  rich  moonlight,  with  stretches  of  veiled  and  dimmer 
landscape  between,  whereas  Howells's  moon  sails  cloudless  skies 
all  night  and  all  the  nights. ' ' 


218  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

HENRY  JAMES.  (1843-1916.)  Watch  and  Ward  [in  the  Atlantic],  1871; 
A  Passionate  Pilgrim,  Roderick  Hudson,  Transatlantic  Sketches,  1875;  The 
American,  1877;  French  Poets  and  Novelists,  The  Europeans,  Daisy  Miller, 
1878;  An  International  Episode,  Life  of  Hawthorne,  A  Bundle  of  Letters, 
The  Madonna  of  the  Future,  Confidence,  1879;  Diary  of  a  Man  of  Fifty, 
Washington  Square,  1880;  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady,  1881;  The  Siege  of 
London,  1883;  Portraits  of  Places,  Tales  of  Three  Cities,  A  Little  Tour 
in  France,  1884;  The  Author  of  Beltrafllo,  1885;  The  Bostonians,  Princess 
Casamassima,  1886;  Partial  Portraits,  The  Aspern  Papers,  The  Reverbera 
tor,  1888;  A  London  Life,  1889;  The  Tragic  Muse,  1890;  The  Lesson  of  the 
Master,  1892;  Terminations,  1896;  The  Spoils  of  Poynton,  What  Maisie 
Knur,  1897;  In  the  Cage,  1898;  The  Awkward  Age,  1899;  The  Soft  Side, 
The  ^acred  Font,  1901;  The  Wings  of  the  Dove,  1902;  The  Better  Sort, 
William  \Vetmore  Story  and  His  Friends,  1903;  The  Question  of  Our 
Speech,  The  Lesson  of  Balzac  [Lectures],  1905;  The  American  Scene, 
Italian  Hours,  Julia  Bride,  Novels  and  Tales,  24  volumes,  1909; 
Finer  Grain,  1910;  The  Outcry,  1911;  A  Small  Boy  and  Others,  1912; 
Notes  of  a  Son  and  Brother,  1913;  Notes  on  Novelists,  with  Some  Other 

.Vo/rs,    1914. 

WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS.     (1837 .)     Poems  of  Two  Friends,  1859; 

Lives  and  Speeches  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Hannibal  Hamlin  |  I  Iain  1  in 
by  J.  L.  Hayes],  1860;  Venetian  Life,  1866;  Italian  Journeys,  1867;  No 
Love  Lost:  a  Romance  of  Travel,  1868;  Suburban  Sketches,  1871;  Their 
Wedding  Journey,  1872;  A  Chance  Acquaintance,  Poems,  1873;  A  Fore 
gone  Conclusion,  1874;  Amateur  Theatricals  [in  the  Atlantic],  1875;  The 
Parlor  Car:  Farce,  1876;  Out  of  the  Question:  a  Comedy,  A  Counterfeit 
Presentiment,  1877;  The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook,  1879;  The  Undiscovered 
Country,  1880;  A  Fearful  Responsibility,  and  Other  Stories,  Dr.  Brccn's 
Practice:  a  Novel,  1881;  A  Modem  Instance:  a  Novel,  1882;  The  Sleeping- 
Car:  a  Farce,  A  Woman's  Reason:  a  Novel,  1883;  The  Register:  Farce, 
Three  Villages,  1884;  The  Elevator:  Farce,  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham, 
Tuscan  Cities,  1885;  The  Garroters:  Farce,  Indian  Summer,  The  Minister's 
Charge,  1886;  Modern  Italian  Poets:  Essays  and  Versions,  April  Hopes, 
1887;  A  Sea-Change;  or,  Love's  Stowaway:  a  Lyricated  Farce,  Annie  Kil- 
burn:  a  Novel,  1888;  The  Mouse-Trap,  and  Other  Farces,  A  Hazard  of 
New  Fortunes:  a  Novel,  1889;  The  Shadow  of  a  Dream:  a  Story,  A  Boy's 
Town,  1890;  Criticism  and  Fiction,  The  Albany  Depot,  An  Imperative 
Duty,  1891;  The  Quality  of  Mercy:  a  Novel,  A  Letter  of  Introduction: 
Farce,  A  Little  Swiss  Sojourn,  Christmas  Every  Day,  and  Other  Stories 
Told  for  Children,  1892;  The  World  of  Chance:  a  Novel,  The  Unexpected 
Guests:  a  Farce,  My  Year  in  a  Log  Cabin,  Evening  Dress:  Farce,  The 
Coast  of  Bohemia:  a  Novel,  1893;  A  Traveler  from  Altruria:  Romance, 
1894;  My  Literary  Passions,  Stops  of  Various  Quills,  1895;  The  Day  of 
Their  Wedding:  a  Novel,  A  Parting  and  a  Meeting,  Impressions  and  Ex 
periences,  1896;  A  Previous  Engagement:  Comedy,  The  Landlord  at  Lion's 
Head:  a  Novel,  An  Open-Eyed  Conspiracy:  an  Idyl  of  Saratoga,  1897; 
The  Story  of  a  Play:  a  Novel,  1898;  Ragged  Lady:  a  Novel,  Their  Silver 


THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION  219 

Wedding  Journey,  1899;  Room  Forty- five:  a  Farce,  The  Smoking  Car:  a 
Farce,  An  Indian  Giver:  a  Comedy,  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance: 
a  Personal  Retrospect  of  American  Authorship,  1900;  A  Pair  of  Patient 
Lovers,  Heroines  of  Fiction,  1901;  The  Kentons,  The  Flight  of  Pony 
Baker:  a  Boy's  Town  Story,  Literature  and  Life:  Studies,  1902;  Question 
able  Shapes,  Letters  Home,  1903;  The  Son  of  Royal  Langbrith:  a  Novel, 
1904;  Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration:  a  Novel,  London  Films,  1905;  Certain 
Delightful  English  Towns,  1906;  Through  the  Eye  of  a  Needle:  a  Romance, 
Mulberries  in  Pay's  Garden,  Between  the  Dark  and  the  Daylight,  1907; 
Fennel  and  Rue:  a  Novel,  Roman  Holidays,  and  Others,  1908;  The  Mother 
and  the  Father:  Dramatic  Passages,  Seven  English  Cities,  1909;  My 
Mark  Twain:  Reminiscences  and  Criticisms,  Imaginary  Interviews,  1910; 
Parting  Friends:  a  Farce,  1911;  Familiar  Spanish  Travels,  New  Leaf  Mills, 
1913;  The  Seen  and  Unseen  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  1914. 


CHAPTER  XI 

RECORDERS  OF   THE  NEW   ENGLAND   DECLINE 

The  New  England  school,  which  had  so  dominated  the  mid- 
nineteenth  century,  left,  as  we  have  seen,  no  heirs.  As  the  great 
figures  of  the  "  Brahmins "  disappeared  one  by  one,  vigorous 
young  leaders  from  without  the  Boston  circle  came  into  their 
places,  but  the  real  succession — the  native  New  England  literary 
generation  after  Emerson — was  feminine.  During  the  decade 
from  1868  the  following  books,  written  by  women  born,  the  most 
of  them,  in  those  thirties  which  had  witnessed  the  beginnings  of 
the  earlier  group,  came  from  the  American  press : 

1868.  Little  Women,  Louisa  M.  Alcott  (1832-1888). 

1868.  The  Gates  Ajar,  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps  (1844-1911). 

1870.  Verses,  Helen  Hunt  Jackson   (1831-1885). 

1872.  Poems,  Celia  Thaxter  (1836-1894). 

1873.  The  Saxe  Holm  Stories,  "Saxe  Holm." 

1875.  One  Summer,  Blanche  Willis  Howard  (1847-1898). 

1875.  After  the  Ball  and  Other  Poems,  Nora  Perry  (1841-1896). 

1877.  Deephaven,  Sarah  Orne  Jewett  (1849-1909). 

1878.  The  China  Hunter's  Club,  Annie  Trumbull  Slosson  (1838 ). 

Of  the  same  generation,  but  earlier  or  else  later  in  the  literary 
field,  were  the  poets  Elizabeth  Akers  Allen  (1832-1911),  and 
Louise  Chandler  Moulton  (1835-1908)  ;  the  essayist  Mary  Abigail 
Dodge,  "Gail  Hamilton"  (1838-1896)  ;  the  novelists  Rose  Terry 
Cooke  (1827-1892),  Jane  G.  Austin  (1831-1894),  and  Harriet 

Prescott  Spofford  (1835 ) ;  and,  latest  of  all  to  be  known,  the 

intense  lyrist  Emily  Dickinson  (1830-1886).  In  the  eighties  was 
to  come  the  school  of  the  younger  realists,  a  part  of  the  classical 

reaction — Alice  Brown  (1857 ),  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin 

(lsf>!i—  -)  and  Mary  E.  Wilkins  (1862—  -),  who  were  to 
record  the  later  phases  of  the  New  England  decline. 

Outside  of  the  New  England  environment  there  was  also  a 
notable  outburst  of  feminine  literature.  In  the  thirteen  years 
from  1875  appeared  the  following  significant  first  volumes: 

220 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       221 

1875.  Castle  Nowhere,  Constance  Fenimore  Woolson   (1848-1894). 
1875.  A  Woman  in  Armor,  Mary  Hartwell  Catherwood  (1847-1902). 
1877.  That  Lass  o'  Lowrie's,  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett   (1849 ). 

1883.  The  Led  Horse  Claim,  Mary  Hallock  Foote   (1847 ). 

1884.  In     the      Tennessee     Mountains,     Mary      Noailles     Murfree 
(1850 ). 

1884.  A  New  Year's  Masque,  Edith  M.  Thomas  (1854 ). 

1886.  The  Old  Garden  and  Other  Verses,  Margaretta  Wade  Deland 
(1857 ). 

1886.  Monsieur  Motte,  Grace  King  (1852 ). 

1887.  Knitters  in  the  Sun,  Alice  French  (1850 ) . 

The  wide  recognition  of  the  Victorian  women,  Charlotte 
Bronte,  George  Eliot,  and  Mrs.  Browning,  and  their  American 
contemporaries,  Margaret  Fuller  and  Mrs.  Stowe,  had  given  the 
impetus,  and  the  enormous  popularity  of  prose  fiction,  a  literary 
form  peculiarly  adapted  to  feminine  treatment,  the  opportunity. 
During  all  the  period  the  work  of  women  dominated  to  a  large 
degree  the  literary  output. 

I 

The  earliest  group  to  appear  was  made  up  of  daughters  of  the 
Brahmins — Louisa  M.  Alcott,  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps,  Rose 
Hawthorne  Lathrop,  Helen  Hunt  Jackson,  and  others — transition 
figures  who  clung  to  the  old  New  England  tradition,  yet  were 
touched  by  the  new  forces.  The  representative  figure  is  Elizabeth 
Stuart  Phelps.  Daughter  and  granddaughter  of  theologians  and 
divinity  professors,  reared  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  Andover 
theological  seminary  of  the  earlier  period,  she  was  a  daughter 
of  her  generation,  a  perfect  sample  of  the  culminating  feminine 
product  of  two  centuries  of  New  England  Puritanism — sensitive 
to  the  brink  of  physical  collapse,  intellectual,  disquieted  of  soul, 
ridden  of  conscience,  introspective.  We  know  the  type  perfectly. 
Miss  Jewett,  Mrs.  Freeman,  Miss  Brown,  have  drawn  us  scores 
of  these  women — the  final  legatees  of  Puritanism,  daughters  of 
Transcendentalists  and  abolitionists  and  religious  wranglers. 

Literature  to  this  group  of  women  was  not  only  a  heritage 
from  the  past,  from  great  shadowy  masters  who  were  mere  names 
and  books,  it  was  a  home  product  in  actual  process  of  manufac 
ture  about  their  cradles.  The  mother  of  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps 
— Elizabeth  Stuart — had  published  in  1851  Sunny-Side,  a  simple 
story  of  life  in  a  country  parsonage,  that  had  sold  one  hundred 
thousand  copies  in  one  year.  She  had  followed  it  with  A  Peep 


222  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

a*  Number  Fire,  a  book  that  places  her  with  Mrs.  Stowe  as  a 
pioneer  depicter  of  New  England  life,  and  then,  at  the  very 
opening  of  her  career,  she  had  died  in  1852.  * '  It  was  impossible 
to  be  her  daughter  and  not  to  write.  Rather,  I  should  say,  im 
possible  to  be  their  daughter  and  not  to  have  something  to  say, 
and  a  pen  to  say  it."1  The  daughter  was  publishing  at  thir 
teen;  at  nineteen  she  was  the  author  of  twelve  Sunday-school 
books ; 1  at  twenty-four  she  had  issued  The  Gates  Ajar,  which  was 
to  L'o  through  twenty  editions  the  first  year  and  to  be  translated 
into  the  principal  European  languages. 

Gates  Ajar  is  a  significant  book,  significant  beyond  its  real 
literary  merit.  It  is  a  small  book,  an  excited,  over-intense  book, 
yet  as  a  document  in  the  history  of  a  period  and  a  confession 
laying  bare  for  an  instant  a  woman's  soul  it  commands  atten 
tion.  It  is  not  a  novel;  it  is  a  journal  intime,  an  impassioned 
theological  argument,  a  personal  experience  written  with  tears 
and  read  with  tears  by  hundreds  of  thousands.  It  was  the  writer 
herself  who  had  received  the  telegram  telling  that  a  loved  one — 
not  a  brother  as  the  book  infers — had  been  shot  in  battle ;  it  was 
her  own  life  that  had  almost  flickered  out  as  the  result  of  it; 
and  it  was  she  who  had  tried  to  square  the  teachings  ingrained 
into  her  Puritan  intellect  with  the  desolation  of  her  woman's 
heart. 

It  was  peculiarly  a  New  England  book :  only  a  New  Englander 
of  the  old  tradition  can  understand  the  full  meaning  of  it,  and 
yet  it  came  at  a  moment  when  the  whole  nation  was  eager  and 
ready  for  its  message.  The  war  had  brought  to  tens  of  thousands 
what  it  had  brought  to  this  New  England  woman.  In  every 
house  there  was  mourning,  and  the  Puritan  vision  of  the  after 
life,  unreasonable  and  lifeless,  was  inadequate  for  a  nation  that 
had  been  nourished  upon  sentimentalism.  The  heart  of  the 
people  demanded  something  warm  and  sensible  and  convincing 
in  place  of  the  cold  scriptural  metaphors  and  abstractions.  The 
new  spirit  that  had  been  awakened  by  the  war  called  for  reality 
and  concrete  statement  everywhere,  and  it  found  in  the  book, 
which  made  of  heaven  another  earth — a  glorified  New  England 
perhaps — with  occupation  and  joys  and  friendships  unchanged,  a 
revelation  with  which  it  was  in  full  accord.  It  brought  comfort, 
for  in  every  line  of  it  was  the  intensity  of  conviction,  of  actual 

i  Chapters  from  a  Life. 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       223 

experience.  It  quivered  with  sympathy,  it  breathed  reality  from 
every  page,  and  it  seemed  to  break  down  the  barriers  until  the 
two  worlds  were  so  near  together  that  one  might  hold  his  breath 
to  listen.  The  book,  while  it  undoubtedly  helped  to  prolong  the 
sentimental  era  in  America,  nevertheless  must  be  counted  among 
the  forces  that  brought  to  the  new  national  period  its  fuller  meas 
ure  of  toleration,  its  demand  for  reality,  its  wider  sympathy. 

All  the  author's  later  books  bear  the  same  marks  of  intensity, 
of  subjectivity,  of  purpose:  all  of  them  are  outpourings  of  her 
self.  She  is  a  special  pleader  shrilling  against  abuses,  as  in 
Loveliness,  which  excoriates  vivisection,  arguing  for  causes  as  in 
The  Story  of  Avis  and  Doctor  Zay,  which  take  high  ground  con 
cerning  women,  or  preaching  sermons  as  in  A  Singular  Life, 
a  vision  of  the  ideal  pastor  and  his  church.  The  accumulated 
Puritanism  within  her  gave  to  all  her  work  dramatic  tension. 
It  is  impossible  to  read  her  with  calmness:  one  is  shocked  and 
grieved  and  harrowed;  one  is  urged  on  every  page  to  think,  to 
feel,  to  rush  forth  and  right  some  wrong,  to  condemn  some  evil 
or  champion  some  cause. 

Her  world  was  largely  a  subjective  one;  to  write  she  must 
be  touched  strongly  on  the  side  of  her  sympathy,  she  must  have 
brought  vividly  into  her  vision  some  concrete  case.  Before  she 
could  write  "The  Tenth  of  January" — Atlantic,  1868 — she  must 
spend  a  month  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  tragedy,  not  to  collect 
realistic  details,  but  to  feel  for  herself  the  horror  that  she  would 
impart.  Her  aim  was  sentimental :  the  whole  story  centers  about 
the  fact  that  while  the  ruins  of  the  fallen  mill  were  burning  there 
floated  out  of  the  flames  the  voices  of  imprisoned  girls  singing 
"Shall  We  Gather  at  the  River?"  In  its  fundamentals  her 
work,  all  of  it,  is  autobiographic.  Womanlike,  she  denied  the 
fact — "If  there  be  one  thing  among  the  possibilities  to  which  a 
truly  civilized  career  is  liable,  more  than  another  objectionable  to 
the  writer  of  these  words,  the  creation  of  autobiography  has  long 
been  that  one,"  2  and  yet  her  books,  all  of  them,  have  been  chap 
ters  out  of  her  own  spiritual  life.  She  has  felt  rather  than  seen, 
she  has  pleaded  rather  than  created.  Rather  than  present  a 
rounded  picture  of  the  life  objectively  about  her,  she  has  given 
analyses  of  her  own  New  England  soul. 

2  Chapters  from  a  Life. 


224  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

She  yielded,  at  last,  in  some  degree,  to  the  later  tendencies  of 
American  literature,  and  drew  with  realistic  faithfulness  charac 
ters  and  characteristics  in  the  little  New  England  world  that 
was  hers — A  Madonna  of  the  Tubs,  TJie  Supply  at  St.  Agatha's, 
Jack,  the  F-ishcnnun,  and  a  few  others,  yet  even  these  are  some 
thing  more  than  stories,  something  more  than  pictures  and  in 
terpretations.  In  Jack,  the  Fisherman,  for  instance,  the  temper 
ance  lesson  stands  out  as  sharply  as  if  she  had  taken  a  text. 
The  artist  within  her  was  dominated  ever  by  the  preacher;  the 
novelist  by  the  Puritan. 

II 

Another  transition  figure,  typical  of  a  group  of  writers  and 
at  the  same  time  illustrative  of  the  change  that  came  over  the 
tone  of  American  literature  after  the  war  period,  is  Harriet  Pres- 
cott  Spofford.  A  country  girl,  born  in  a  Maine  village,  educated 
in  the  academy  of  a  country  town  in  New  Hampshire,  compelled 
early  to  be  the  chief  support  of  an  invalided  father  and  mother, 
she  turned  from  the  usual  employments  open  to  the  women  of  her 
time — work  in  the  cotton  mills  and  school  teaching — to  the  pre 
carious  field  of  literature.  That  could  mean  only  story-writing 
for  the  family  weeklies  of  the  day,  for  a  bourgeois  public  that 
demanded  sentimental  love  stories  and  romance.  Success  made 
her  ambitious.  She  applied  herself  to  the  study  of  fiction — 
American,  English,  French.  How  wide  was  her  reading  one  may 
learn  from  her  essays  later  published  in  the  Atlantic,  "The  Au 
thor  of  'Charles  Auchester'  "  and  "Charles  Reade."  The  new 
realism  which  was  beginning  to  be  felt  as  a  force  in  fiction,  she 
flouted  with  indignation: — "he  never  with  Chinese  accuracy, 
gives  us  gossiping  drivel  that  reduces  life  to  the  dregs  of  the 
commonplace."  Rather  would  she  emulate  the  popular  novelist 
Elizabeth  Sheppard:  "At  his,  Disraeli's,  torch  she  lit  her  fires, 
over  his  stories  she  dreamed,  his  'Contarini  Fleming'  she  declared 
to  be  the  touchstone  of  all  romantic  truth."3  The  essay  re 
veals  the  author  like  a  flash  TIL:  lit.  She  too  dreamed  over  Disraeli 
and  the  early  Bulwer-Lytton,  over  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Poe, 
over  George  Sand  and  French  romance  until  at  last  when  she 
submitted  her  first  story  to  the  Atlantic,  "In  a  Cellar,"  Lowell 
for  a  time  feared  that  it  was  a  translation. 

a  Atlantic,  June,  1862. 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE      225 

Other  American  women  have  had  imaginations  as  lawless  and 
as  gorgeously  rich  as  Harriet  Prescott  Spofford's;  Augusta  J. 
Evans  Wilson,  for  instance,  whose  St.  Elmo  (1866)  sold  enor 
mously  even  to  the  end  of  the  new  period,  but  no  other  American 
woman  of  the  century  was  able  to  combine  with  her  imaginings 
and  her  riotous  colorings  a  real  distinction  of  style.  When  in 
the  fifth  volume  of  the  Atlantic  appeared  "The  Amber  Gods," 
judicious  readers  everywhere  cried  out  in  astonishment.  Robert 
Browning  and  others  in  England  praised  it  extravagantly.  A 
new  star  had  arisen,  a  novelist  with  a  style  that  was  French  in 
its  brilliancy  and  condensation,  and  oriental  in  its  richness  and 
color. 

The  Amber  Gods  fails  of  being  a  masterpiece  by  a  margin  so 
small  that  it  exasperates,  and  it  fails  at  precisely  the  point  where 
most  of  the  mid-century  fiction  failed.  In  atmosphere  and  style 
it  is  brilliant,  so  brilliant  indeed  that  it  has  been  appraised  more 
highly  than  it  deserves.  Moreover,  the  motif,  as  one  gathers 
it  from  the  earlier  pages,  is  worthy  of  a  Hawthorne.  The  amber 
beads  have  upon  them  an  ancestral  curse,  and  the  heroine  with 
her  supernatural  beauty,  a  satanic  thing  without  a  soul,  is  a  part 
of  the  mystery  and  the  curse.  Love  seems  at  length  to  promise 
Undine-like  a  soul  to  this  soulless  creature : 

He  read  it  through — all  that  perfect,  perfect  scene.  From  the  mo 
ment  when  he  said, 

"I  overlean, 

This  length  of  hair  and  lustrous  front — they  turn 
Like  an  entire  flower  upward" — 

his  voice  low,  sustained,  clear — till  he  reached  the  line, 

"Look  at  the  woman  here  with  the  new  soul" — 
till  he  turned  the  leaf  and  murmured, 

"Shall  to  produce  form  out  of  unshaped  stuff 
Be  art — and,  further,  to  evoke  a  soul 
From  form  be  nothing?     This  new  soul  is  mine!" — 
till  then  he  never  glanced  up. 

But  there  is  lack  of  constructive  skill,  lack  of  definiteness, 
lack  of  reality.  The  story  sprawls  at  the  end  where  it  should 
culminate  with  compelling  power.  The  last  sentence  is  startling, 
but  it  is  not  connected  with  the  motif  and  is  a  mere  sensational 
addition.  Everywhere  there  is  the  unusual,  the  overwrought, 
incoherent  vagueness.  It  is  not  experience,  it  is  a  revel  of  color 


226  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

and   of  sensuousness ;   it   is  a   Keats-like  banquet,   sweets   and 
spicery. 

The  parallelism  with  Keats  may  be  pressed  far.  She  was  first 
of  all  a  poet,  a  lyrist,  a  dweller  in  Arcady  rather  than  in  a  New 
England  village.  She,  like  so  many  others  of  her  generation, 
had  fallen  under  the  spell  of  the  young  Tennyson,  and  her  world 
is  a  world  of  cloying  sweetness,  of  oriental  sensuousness,  of 
merely  physical  beauty.  Poems  like  "Pomegranate-Flowers" 
and  "In  Titian's  Garden"  show  her  tropical  temperament: 

And  some  girl   sea-bronzed   and   sparkling, 

On  her  cheek  the  stain  ensanguined, 

Bears  aloft  the  bossy  salver: 

As  the  innocent  Lavinia 

Brought  them  in  old  days  of  revel 

Fruits  and  flowers  amesh  with  sunbeams — 

No  red  burnish  of  pomegranates, 

No  cleft  peach  in  velvet  vermeil, 

No  bright  grapes  their  blue  bloom  bursting, 

Dews  between  the  cool  globes  slipping, 

Dews  like  drops  of  clouded  sapphire, 

But  the  brighter  self  and  spirit, 

Glowed  illusive  in  her  beauty. 

The  same  poetic  glamour  she  threw  over  all  the  work  that  now 
poured  in  swift  profusion  from  her  pen:  Sir  Rohan's  Ghost, 
Azarian,  and  a  score  of  short  stories  in  the  Atlantic  and  Harper's 
and  other  periodicals.  It  had  been  felt  that  the  faults  so  mani 
fest  in  "In  a  Cellar"  and  "The  Amber  Gods"  would  disappear 
as  the  young  author  gained  in  maturity  and  knowledge  of  her 
art,  but  they  not  only  persisted,  they  increased.  Like  Charlotte 
Bronte,  whom  in  so  many  ways  she  resembled,  she  knew  life  only 
as  she  dreamed  of  it  in  her  country  seclusion  or  read  of  it  in  ro 
mance.  At  length  toleration  ceased.  In  1865  The  North  Ameri 
can  Review  condemned  Azarian  as  "devoid  of  human  nature  and 
false  to  actual  society,"  and  then  added  the  significant  words: 
"We  would  earnestly  exhort  Miss  Prescott  to  be  real,  to  be  true 
to  something."  It  marks  not  alone  the  end  of  the  first  period 
in  Miss  Prescott 's  career;  it  marks  the  closing  of  an  era  in  Ameri 
can  fiction. 

Wonder  has  often  been  expressed  that  one  who  could  write 
"The  Amber  Gods"  and  Sir  Rohan's  Ghost  should  suddenly  lapse 
into  silence  and  refuse  to  work  the  rich  vein  she  had  opened. 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       227 

The  change,  however,  was  not  with  the  author;  it  was  with  the 
times.  "Within  a  year  Howells  was  assistant  editor  of  the  At 
lantic.  The  artificiality  of  style  and  the  high  literary  tone  de 
manded  in  the  earlier  period  disappeared  with  the  war,  and  in 
their  place  came  simplicity  and  naturalness  and  reality.  The 
author  of  Azarian  continued  to  write  her  passionate  and  melodi 
ous  romance,  but  the  columns  of  the  Atlantic  and  Harper's  at 
length  were  closed  to  her  tales.  A  volume  of  her  work  of  this 
period  still  awaits  a  publisher. 

She  now  turned  to  poetry — there  was  no  ban  upon  that;  the 
old  regime  died  first  in  its  prose — and  poured  out  lyrics  that  are 
to  be  compared  even  with  those  of  Taylor  and  Aldrich,  lyrics  full 
of  passion  and  color  and  sensuous  beauty.  Among  the  female 
poets  of  America  she  must  be  accorded  a  place  near  the  highest. 
Only  "H.  H."  could  have  poured  out  a  lyric  like  this: 

In  the  dew  and  the  dark  and  the  coolness 

I  bend  to  the  beaker  and  sip, 
For  the  earth  is  the  Lord's,  and  its  fullness 

Is  held  like  the  cup  to  my  lip. 

For  his  are  the  vast  opulences 

Of  color,  of  line,  and  of  flight, 
And  his  was  the  joy  of  the  senses 

Before  I  was  born  to  delight. 

Forever  the  loveliness  lingers, 

Or  in  flesh,  or  in  spirit,  or  dream, 
For  it  swept  from  the  touch  of  his  fingers 

"While  his  garments  trailed  by  in  the  gleam. 

When  the  dusk  and  the  dawn  in  slow  union 

Bring  beauty  to  bead  at  the  brim, 
I  take,  't  is  the  cup  of  communion, 

I  drink,  and  I  drink  it  with  Him! 

A  chapter  of  analysis  could  not  so  completely  reveal  the  soul  of 
Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 

For  a  time  she  busied  herself  making  books  on  art  decoration 
applied  to  furniture,  and  then  at  last  she  yielded  to  the  forces 
of  the  age  and  wrote  stories  that  again  commanded  the  maga 
zines.  With  work  like  "A  Rural  Telephone,"  "An  Old  Fid 
dler,"  and  "A  Village  Dressmaker,"  she  entered  with  real  dis 
tinction  the  field  that  had  been  preempted  by  Miss  Cooke  and 


228  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Miss  Jewett,  the  depiction  of  New  England  life  in  its  actuality. 
Then  at  the  close  of  her  literary  life  she  wrote  deeper  tales,  like 
"Ordrounaux,"  a  story  with  the  same  underlying  motif  as 
"The  Amber  Gods" — the  creation  of  a  soul  in  soulless  beauty — 
I  nit  worked  out  now  with  reality,  and  experience,  and  compelling 
power.  But  it  was  too  late.  Could  she  have  learned  her  lesson 
when  Rose  Terry  Cooke  learned  hers ;  could  she,  instead  of  wast 
ing  her  powers  upon  the  gorgeous  Azarian,  have  sent  fortli  in 
1863  her  volume  Old  Madame  and  Other  Tragedies,  she  might 
have  taken  a  leading  place  among  American  novelists. 

Ill 

The  school  of  fiction  that  during  the  later  period  stands  for 
the  depicting  of  New  England  life  and  character  in  their  actu 
ality  had  as  its  pioneers  Mrs.  Stowe  and  Rose  Terry  Cooke.  Both 
did  their  earlier  work  in  the  spirit  and  manner  of  the  mid  cen 
tury;  both  were  poets  and  dreamers;  both  until  late  in  their 
lives  worked  with  feeling  rather  than  observation  and  gave  to 
their  fiction  vagueness  of  outline  and  romantic  unreality.  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  was  written  by  one  who  had  never  visited  the  South, 
who  drew  her  materials  largely  from  her  feelings  and  her  im 
agination,  and  made  instead  of  a  transcript  of  actual  life,  a  book 
of  religious  emotion,  a  swift,  unnatural  succession  of  picturesque 
scene  and  incident,  an  improvisation  of  lyrical  passion — a  melo 
drama.  It  is  the  typical  novel  of  the  period  before  1870,  the 
period  that  bought  enormous  editions  of  The  Lamplighter,  The 
Wide,  Wide  World,  and  St.  Elmo.  The  Minister's  Wooing,  1859, 
a  historical  romance  written  in  the  Andover  that  a  little  later 
was  to  produce  Gates  Ajar,  was  also  fundamentally  religious  and 
controversial :  it  contained  the  keynote  of  what  was  afterwards 
known  as  the  Andover  movement.  It  dealt  with  a  people  and 
an  environment  that  the  author  knew  as  she  knew  her  own  child 
hood,  and  it  had  therefore,  as  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  has  not,  sym 
pathy  of  comprehension  and  truth  to  local  scene  and  character. 
And  yet  despite  her  knowledge  and  her  sympathy,  the  shadow  of 
the  mid  century  lies  over  it  from  end  to  end.  It  lacked  what 
Elsie  Venner  lacked,  what  the  great  bulk  of  the  pre-Civil  War 
literature  lacked,  organization,  sharpness  of  line,  reality.  Lowell, 
a  generation  ahead  of  his  time,  saw  the  weakness  as  well  as  the 
strength  of  the  book,  and  in  pointing  it  out  he  criticized  not  alone 


EECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       229 

the  author  but  her  period  as  well.  "My  advice,"  he  wrote  her 
with  fine  courage,  "is  to  follow  your  own  instincts — to  stick  to 
nature,  and  avoid  what  people  commonly  call  the  'Ideal';  for 
that,  and  beauty,  and  pathos,  and  success,  all  lie  in  the  simply 
natural.  .  .  .  There  are  ten  thousand  people  who  can  write 
'ideal'  things  for  one  who  can  see,  and  feel,  and  reproduce  na 
ture  and  character. ' ' 4  Again  the  voice  of  the  new  period  in 
American  literature.  But  Mrs.  Stowe  was  not  one  to  heed  lit 
erary  advice;  her  work  must  come  by  inspiration,  by  impulse 
connected  with  purpose,  and  it  must  work  itself  out  without 
thought  of  laws  or  models.  The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island  came  by 
impulse,  as  later,  in  1869,  came  Oldtown  Folks.  "It  was  more 
to  me  than  a  story,"  she  wrote  of  it;  "it  is  my  resume  of  the 
whole  spirit  and  body  of  New  England,  a  country  that  is  now 
exerting  such  an  influence  on  the  civilized  world  that  to  know  it 
truly  becomes  an  object."5  That  these  books,  and  the  Oldtown 
Fireside  Stories  that  followed,  do  furnish  such  a  resume  is  by  no 
means  true,  but  that  they  are  faithful  transcripts  of  New  Eng 
land  life,  and  are  pioneer  books  in  a  field  that  later  was  to  be 
intensively  cultivated,  cannot  be  doubted. 

Mrs.  Stowe 's  influence  upon  later  writers  was  greater  than  is 
warranted  by  her  actual  accomplishment.  The  fierce  light  that 
beat  upon  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  gave  to  all  of  her  work  extraor 
dinary  publicity  and  made  of  her  a  model  when  otherwise  she 
would  have  been  unknown.  The  real  pioneer  was  Rose  Terry 
Cooke,  daughter  of  a  humble  family  in  a  small  Connecticut  vil 
lage.  Educated  in  a  seminary  near  her  home,  at  sixteen  she  was 
teaching  school  and  at  eighteen  she  was  writing  for  Graham's 
Magazine  a  novel  called  The  Mormon's  Wife.  That  she  had 
never  been  in  Utah  and  had  never  even  seen  a  Mormon,  mattered 
not  at  all ;  the  tale  to  win  its  audience  need  be  true  only  to  its 
author's  riotous  fancy.  But  the  author  had  humor  as  well  as 
fancy,  and  her  sense  of  humor  was  to  save  her.  In  her  school 
work  in  rural  districts  she  was  in  contact  constantly  with  the 
quaint  and  the  ludicrous,  with  all  those  strongly  individualized 
characters  that  Puritanism  and  isolated  country  living  had  ren 
dered  abundant.  They  were  a  part  of  her  every-day  life;  they 
appealed  not  only  to  her  sense  of  humor,  but  to  her  sympathy. 

4  Stowe's  Life  of  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  334. 
«  Fields's  Authors  and  Friends,  200. 


230  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

She  found  herself  thinking  of  them  as  she  sought  for  subjects  for 
her  fiction.  Her  passion  and  her  ambition  were  centered  upon 
poetry.  The  idealism  and  the  loftiness  that  Harriet  Prescott 
Spofford  threw  into  her  early  romance,  she  threw  into  her  lyrics. 
Fiction  was  a  thing  of  less  seriousness ;  it  could  be  trifled  with ; 
it  could  even  record  the  humor  and  the  quaintness  of  the  common 
folk  amid  whom  she  toiled.  She  turned  to  it  as  to  a  diversion 
and  she  was  surprised  to  find  that  Lowell,  the  editor  of  the  new 
and  exclusive  Atlantic,  preferred  it  to  her  poetry.  For  the  first 
volume  of  the  magazine  he  accepted  no  fewer  than  five  of  her 
homely  little  sketches,  and  praised  them'for  their  fidelity  and  truth. 
That  the  author  considered  this  prose  work  an  innovation  and 
something  below  the  high  tone  of  real  literature,  cannot  be 
doubted.  In  ''Miss  Lucinda"  (Atlantic,  1861),  as  perfect  a 
story  of  its  kind  as  was  ever  written,  she  feels  called  upon  to 
explain,  and  her  explanation  is  a  declaration  of  independence : 

But  if  I  apologize  for  a  story  that  is  nowise  tragic,  nor  fitted  to  "the 
fashion  of  these  times,"  possibly  somebody  will  say  at  its  end  that  I 
should  also  have  apologized  for  its  subject,  since  it  is  as  easy  for  an 
author  to  treat  his  readers  to  high  themes  as  vulgar  ones,  and  velvet 
can  be  thrown  into  a  portrait  as  cheaply  as  calico ;  but  of  this  apology 
I  wash  my  hands.  I  believe  nothing  in  place  or  circumstance  makes 
romance.  I  have  the  same  quick  sympathy  for  Biddy's  sorrows  with 
Patrick  that  I  have  for  the  Empress  of  France  and  her  august,  but 
rather  grim,  lord  and  master.  I  think  words  are  often  no  harder  to 
bear  than  "a  blue  batting,"  and  I  have  a  reverence  for  poor  old  maids 
as  great  as  for  the  nine  Muses.  Commonplace  people  are  only  common 
place  from  character,  and  no  position  affects  that.  So  forgive  me 
once  more,  patient  reader,  if  I  offer  you  no  tragedy  in  high  life,  no 
sentimental  history  of  fashion  and  wealth,  but  only  a  little  story  about 
a  woman  who  could  not  be  a  heroine. 

This  is  the  key  to  her  later  work.  She  wrote  simple  little 
stories  of  commonplace  people  in  a  commonplace  environment, 
and  she  treated  them  with  the  sympathy  of  one  who  shares,  rather 
than  as  one  who  looks  down  upon  a  spectacle  and  takes  sides. 
There  is  no  bookish  flavor  about  the  stories:  they  are  as  artless 
as  the  narrative  told  by  a  winter  hearth.  In  the  great  mass  of 
fiction  dealing  with  New  England  life  and  character  her  work 
excels  in  humor — that  subdued  humor  which  permeates  every 
part  like  an  atmosphere — in  the  picturing  of  the  odd  and  the 
whimsical,  in  tenderness  and  sympathy,  and  in  the  perfect  art- 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       231 

lessness  that  is  the  last  triumph  of  art.  Hers  is  not  a  realism  of 
the  severe  and  scientific  type :  it  is  a  poetic  realism  like  that  of 
the  earlier  and  more  delightful  Howells,  a  realism  that  sees  life 
through  a  window  with  the  afternoon  light  upon  it.  In  the  whole 
output  of  the  school  there  are  few  sketches  more  charming  and 
more  true  than  her  "Miss  Lucinda,"  "Freedom  Wheeler's  Con 
troversy  with  Providence,"  "Old  Miss  Dodd,"  "The  Deacon's 
Week,"  and  "A  Town  and  a  Country  Mouse."  Others,  like 
Mrs.  Slosson  and  Rowland  E.  Robinson,  for  instance,  have  caught 
with  exquisite  skill  the  grotesque  and  the  humorous  side  of 
New  England  life,  but  none  other  has  shown  the  whole  of  New 
England  with  the  sympathy  and  the  comprehension  and  the  deli 
cacy  of  Rose  Terry  Cooke. 

IV 

Of  the  later  group,  the  generation  born  in  the  fifties  and  the 
early  sixties,  Sarah  Orne  Jewett  is  the  earliest  figure.  With  her 
there  was  no  preliminary  dallying  with  mid-century  sentiment 
and  sensationalism;  she  belongs  to  the  era  of  Oldtown  Folks 
rather  than  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  "It  was  happily  in  the 
writer's  childhood,"  she  records  in  her  later  introduction  to 
Deephaven,  "that  Mrs.  Stowe  had  written  of  those  who  dwelt 
along  the  wooded  sea-coast  and  by  the  decaying,  shipless  harbors 
of  Maine.  The  first  chapters  of  The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island  gave 
the  young  author  of  Deephaven  to  see  with  new  eyes  and  to 
follow  eagerly  the  old  shore  paths  from  one  gray,  weather- 
beaten  house  to  another,  where  Genius  pointed  her  the  way." 
And  again  in  a  letter  written  in  1889 :  "I  have  been  reading  the 
beginning  of  The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island  and  finding  it  just  as 
clear  and  perfectly  original  and  strong  as  it  seemed  to  me  in  my 
thirteenth  or  fourteenth  year,  when  I  read  it  first.  I  shall  never 
forget  the  exquisite  flavor  and  reality  of  delight  it  gave  me.  It  is 
classical — historical. ' '  6 

She  herself  had  been  born  by  one  of  those  same  "decaying, 
shipless  harbors  of  Maine,"  at  South  Berwick,  a  village  not  far 
from  the  native  Portsmouth  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich.  It  was 
no  ordinary  town,  this  deserted  little  port.  "A  stupid,  common 
country  town,  some  one  dared  to  call  Deephaven  in  a  letter  once, 

6  Letters  of  S.  0.  Jewett,  47. 


232  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

and  how  bitterly  we  resented  it. " 7  It  had  seen  better  days. 
There  was  an  atmosphere  about  it  from  a  romantic  past.  In 
Miss  Jr\\  vtt's  work  it  figures  as  Deephaven,  "The  place  prided 
itself  most  upon  having  been  long  ago  the  residence  of  one  Gov 
ernor  Chan  trey,  who  was  a  rich  ship-owner  and  East  India  mer 
chant,  and  whose  fame  and  magnificence  were  almost  fabulous. 
.  .  .  There  were  formerly  five  families  who  kept  their  coaches  in 
Deephaven;  there  were  balls  at  the  Governor's  and  regal  enter 
tainments  at  other  of  the  grand  mansions;  there  is  not  a  really 
distinguished  person  in  the  country  who  will  not  prove  to  have 
been  directly  or  indirectly  connected  with  Deephaven.'*  And 
again,  "Deephaven  seemed  more  like  one  of  the  cozy  little  Eng 
lish  seaside  towns  than  any  other.  It  was  not  in  the  least  Amer 
ican." 

The  social  regime  of  this  early  Berwick  had  been  cavalier  rather 
than  Puritan.  It  had  survived  in  a  few  old  families  like  the 
Jewetts,  a  bit  of  the  eighteenth  century  come  down  into  the  late 
niiiftffiith.  Miss  Jewett  all  her  life  seemed  like  her  own  Miss 
Chauncey,  an  exotic  from  an  earlier  day,  a  survival — "thor 
oughly  at  her  ease,  she  had  the  manner  of  a  lady  of  the  olden 
time."  Her  father,  a  courtly  man  and  cultivated,  a  graduate  of 
Bowdoin  and  for  a  time  a  lecturer  there,  gave  ever  the  impression 
that  he  could  have  filled  with  brilliancy  a  larger  domain  than  that 
he  had  deigned  to  occupy.  He  had  settled  down  in  Berwick  as 
physician  for  a  wide  area,  much  trusted  and  much  revered,  a 
physician  who  ministered  to  far  more  than  the  physical  needs  of 
his  people.  His  daughter,  with  a  daughter's  loving  hand,  has 
depicted  him  in  A  Country  Doctor,  perhaps  the  most  tender  and 
intimate  of  all  her  studies.  She  owed  much  to  him ;  from  him  had 
come,  indeed,  the  greater  part  of  all  that  was  vital  in  her  educa 
tion.  Day  after  day  she  had  ridden  with  him  along  the  country 
roads,  and  had  called  with  him  at  the  farmhouses  and  cottages, 
and  had  talked  with  him  of  people  and  flowers  and  birds,  of  olden 
times,  of  art  and  literature. 

A  story  from  her  pen,  "Mr.  Bruce, "  signed  "A.  E.  Eliot,"  had 
appeared  in  the  Atlantic  as  early  as  1869,  but  it  was  not  until 
1873  that  "The  Shore  House,"  changed  later  to  "Kate  Lan 
caster's  Plan,"  the  first  of  the  Deephaven  papers,  appeared  in 
the  same  magazine.  She  had  begun  to  write  with  a  definite  pur- 

^  Deephaven,  84. 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       233 

pose.  ""When  I  was  perhaps  fifteen,'*  she  records  in  an  auto 
biographical  fragment,  "the  first  city  boarders  began  to  make 
their  appearance  near  Berwick,  and  the  way  they  misconstrued 
the  country  people  and  made  game  of  their  peculiarities  fired  me 
with  indignation.  I  determined  to  teach  the  world  that  country 
people  were  not  the  awkward,  ignorant  set  those  people  seemed  to 
think.  I  wanted  the  world  to  know  their  grand  simple  lives; 
and,  so  far  as  I  had  a  mission,  when  I  first  began  to  write,  I  think 
that  was  it." 

Mrs.  Stowe  and  Mrs.  Cooke  were  the  depicters  of  the  older 
New  England,  the  New  England  at  flood  tide;  Miss  Jewett  was 
the  first  to  paint  the  ebb.  With  them  New  England  was  a  social 
unit  as  stable  as  the  England  of  Jane  Austen ;  with  her  it  was  a 
society  in  transition,  the  passing  of  an  old  regime.  The  west 
ward  exodus  had  begun,  with  its  new  elements  of  old  people  left 
behind  by  their  migrating  children,  the  deserted  farm,  the  de 
caying  seaside  town,  the  pathetic  return  of  the  native  for  a  brief 
day,  as  in  "A  Native  of  Winby,"  and,  to  crown  it  all,  the  sum 
mer  boarder  who  had  come  in  numbers  to  laugh  at  the  old  and 
wonder  at  it.  She  would  preserve  all  that  was  finest  in  the  New 
England  that  was  passing,  and  put  it  into  clear  light  that  all 
might  see  how  glorious  the  past  had  been,  and  how  beautiful  and 
true  were  the  pathetic  fragments  that  still  remained. 

She  approached  her  work  with  the  serenity  and  the  seriousness 
of  one  who  goes  to  devotions.  She  was  never  watchful  for  the 
eccentric  and  the  picturesque ;  there  are  no  grotesque  deacons  and 
shrill  old  maids  in  her  stories.  She  would  depict  only  the  finer 
and  gentler  side  of  New  England  life:  men  quiet  and  kindly; 
women  sweet-tempered  and  serene.  We  may  smile  over  her  pic 
tures  of  ancient  mariners  ' '  sunning  themselves  like  turtles  on  the 
wharves, ' '  her  weather-beaten  farmers  gentle  as  women,  and  her 
spinsters  and  matrons,  like  Miss  Debby,  belonging  to  "a  class  of 
elderly  New  England  women  which  is  fast  dying  out,"  but  we 
leave  them  always  with  the  feeling  that  they  are  noblemen  and 
ladies  in  disguise.  Her  little  stretch  of  Maine  coast  with  its 
pointed  firs,  its  bleak  farms,  and  its  little  villages  redolent  of 
the  sea  she  has  made  peculiarly  her  own  domain,  just  as  Hardy 
has  made  Wessex  his,  and  she  has  made  of  her  native  Deephaven 
an  American  counterpart  of  Cranford. 

Many  times  Miss  Jewett  has  been  compared  with  Hawthorne, 


234  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

and  undoubtedly  there  is  basis  for  comparison.  Her  style,  in 
deed,  in  its  simplicity  and  effortless  strength  may  be  likened 
to  his,  and  her  pictures  of  decaying  wharves  and  of  quaint  per 
sonages  in  an  old  town  by  the  sea  have  the  same  atmosphere  and 
the  same  patrician  air  of  distinction,  but  further  one  may  not 
go.  Of  his  power  to  trace  the  blighting  and  transforming  effects 
of  a  sin  and  his  wizard  knowledge  of  the  human  heart,  she  had 
nothing.  She  is  a  writer  of  little  books  and  short  stories,  the 
painter  of  a  few  subjects  in  a  provincial  little  area,  but  within 
her  narrow  province  she  has  no  rival  nearer  her  own  times  than 
Mrs.  Gaskell. 

Her  kinship  is  with  Howells  rather  than  with  Hawthorne,  the 
Howells  of  the  earlier  manner,  with  his  pictures  of  the  Boston 
of  the  East  India  days,  his  half-poetic  studies  in  background  and 
character,  his  portraits  etched  with  exquisite  art,  his  lambent 
humor  that  plays  over  all  like  an  evening  glow.  In  her  stories, 
too,  the  plot  is  slight,  and  background  and  characterization  and 
atmosphere  dominate;  and  as  with  him  in  the  days  before  the 
poet  had  been  put  to  death,  realism  is  touched  everywhere  with 
romance.  She  paints  the  present  ever  upon  the  background  of 
an  old,  forgotten,  far-off  past,  with  that  dim  light  upon  it  that 
now  lies  over  the  South  of  the  old  plantation  days.  Over  all  of 
her  work  lies  this  gentle  glamour,  this  softness  of  atmosphere,  this 
evanescent  shade  of  regret  for  something  vanished  forever.  Hers 
is  a  transfigured  New  England,  a  New  England  with  all  its  rough 
ness  and  coarseness  and  sordidness  refined  away,  the  New  Eng 
land  undoubtedly  that  her  gentle  eyes  actually  saw.  Once,  in 
deed,  she  wrote  pure  romance.  Her  The  Tory  Lover  is  her  dream 
of  New  England's  day  of  chivalry,  the  high  tide  mark  from  which 
to  measure  the  depth  of  its  ebb. 

Her  power  lies  in  her  purity  of  style,  her  humorous  little 
touches,  and  her  power  of  characterization.  Work  like  her  "A 
White  Heron,"  "Miss  Tempy's  Watchers, "  and  "The  Dulham 
Ladies,"  has  a  certain  lightness  of  touch,  a  pathos  and  a  humor, 
a  skill  in  delineation  which  wastes  not  a  word  or  an  effect,  that 
places  it  among  the  most  delicate  and  finished  of  American  short 
stories.  Yet  brilliant  as  they  are  in  technique,  in  charactcri/a- 
tion  and  background  and  atmosphere,  they  lack  nevertheless  the 
final  touch  of  art.  They  are  too  literary;  they  are  too  much 
works  of  art,  too  much  from  the  intellect  and  not  enough  from 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       235 

the  heart.  They  are  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  sketches,  marvelously 
well  done,  but  always  from  the  Sir  Roger  standpoint.  There  is 
a  certain  il quality"  in  all  that  Miss  Jewett  wrote,  a  certain 
unconscious  noblesse  oblige  that  kept  her  ever  in  the  realm  of  the 
gentle,  the  genteel,  the  Berwick  old  regime.  One  feels  it  in  her 
avoidance  of  everything  common  and  squalid,  in  her  freedom 
from  passion  and  dramatic  climax,  in  her  objective  attitude  to 
ward  her  characters.  She  is  always  sympathetic,  she  is  moved 
at  times  to  real  pathos,  but  she  stands  apart  from  her  picture; 
she  observes  and  describes;  she  never,  like  Rose  Terry  Cooke, 
mingles  and  shares.  She  cannot.  Hers  is  the  pride  that  the 
lady  of  the  estate  takes  in  her  beloved  peasantry ;  of  the  patrician 
who  steps  down  of  an  afternoon  into  the  cottage  and  comes  back 
to  tell  with  amusement  and  perhaps  with  tears  of  what  she  finds 
there. 

All  her  life  she  lived  apart  from  that  which  she  described. 
Her  winters  she  spent  in  Boston,  much  of  the  time  in  the  home 
of  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields,  surrounded  by  memorials  of  the  great 
period  of  American  literature.  Like  Howells,  she  wrote  ever  in 
the  presence  of  the  Brahmins — a  task  not  difficult,  for  she  her 
self  was  a  Brahmin.  It  was  impossible  for  her  to  be  common 
or  to  be  narrowly  realistic.  She  wrote  with  deliberation  and  she 
revised  and  rerevised  and  finished  her  work,  conscious  ever  of  her 
art — a  classicist,  sending  forth  nothing  that  came  as  a  cry 
from  her  heart,  nothing  that  came  winged  with  a  message, 
nothing  that  voiced  a  vision  and  a  new  seeing,  nothing  that 
was  not  literary  in  the  highest  classical  sense.  In  the  history  of 
the  new  period  she  stands  midway  between  Mrs.  Spofford  and  Mrs. 
Freeman;  a  new  realist  whose  heart  was  with  the  old  school;  a 
romanticist,  but  equipped  with  a  camera  and  a  fountain  pen. 


Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman  is  the  typical  representative  of  the 
group  born  a  generation  after  the  women  of  the  thirties,  the 
group  that  knew  nothing  of  the  emotional  fifties  and  sixties,  and 
that  began  its  work  when  the  new  literature  of  actuality,  the 
realism  of  Flaubert  and  Hardy  and  Howells,  was  in  full  domina 
tion.  Of  hesitancy,  of  transition  from  the  old  to  the  new,  her 
fiction  shows  no  trace.  From  her  first  story  she  was  a  realist,  as 
enamoured  of  actuality  and  as  restrained  as  Maupassant.  She 


236  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

seems  to  have  followed  no  one :  realism  was  a  thing  native  to  her, 
as  indeed  it  is  native  to  all  women.  "  Women  are  delicate  and 
patient  observers,"  Henry  James  has  said  in  his  essay  on  Trol- 
lope.  "They  hold  their  noses  close,  as  it  were,  to  the  texture  of 
life.  They  feel  and  perceive  the  real. ' '  But  to  her  realism  Miss 
Wilkins  added  a  power  usually  denied  her  sex,  the  power  of  de 
tachment,  the  epic  power  that  excludes  the  subjective  and  hides 
the  artist  behind  the  picture.  In  all  the  writings  of  the  creator 
of  Gates  Ajar  we  see  but  the  intense  and  emotional  soul  of  Eliza 
beth  Stuart  Phelps;  in  that  of  the  writer  of  A  Humble  Romance 
we  see  only  the  grim  lineaments  of  New  England,  a  picture  as 
remorseless  and  as  startling  as  if  a  searchlight  had  been  turned 
into  the  dim  and  cobwebbed  recesses  of  an  ancient  vault.  She 
stands  not  aloof  like  Miss  Jewett ;  she  is  simply  unseen.  She  is 
working  in  the  materials  of  her  own  heart  and  drawing  the  out 
lines  of  her  own  home,  yet  she  possesses  the  epic  power  to  keep 
her  creations  impersonal  to  the  point  of  anonymousness. 

For  her  work,  everything  in  her  life  was  a  preparation.  She 
was  born  in  Randolph  not  far  from  Boston,  of  an  ancestry  which 
extended  back  into  the  darkest  shadows  of  Puritanism,  to  old 
Salem  and  a  judge  in  the  witchcraft  trials.  Her  more  immediate 
progenitors  were  of  humble  station :  her  father  was  first  a  builder 
in  her  native  Randolph,  then  a  store-keeper  in  Brattleboro, 
Vermont.  Thus  her  formative  years  were  passed  in  the  narrow 
environment  of  New  England  villages.  The  death  of  her  father 
and  mother  during  her  early  girlhood  must  also  be  recorded,  as 
should  the  fact  that  her  schooling  was  austere  and  limited. 

When  she  approached  literature,  therefore,  it  was  as  a  daughter 
of  the  Puritans,  as  one  who  had  been  nurtured  in  repression.  Love 
in  its  tropical  intensity,  the  fierce  play  of  the  passions,  color,  pro 
fusion,  outspoken  toleration,  freedom — romance  in  its  broadest 
connotation — of  these  she  knew  nothing.  She  had  lived  her  whole 
life  in  the  warping  atmosphere  of  inherited  Puritanism,  of  a  Puri 
tanism  that  had  lost  its  earlier  vitality  and  had  become  a  conven 
tion  and  a  superstition,  in  a  social  group  inbred  for  generations 
and  narrowly  restricted  to  neighborhood  limits.  "They  were  all 
narrow-lived  country  people,"  she  writes.  "Their  customs  had 
made  deeper  grooves  in  their  roads ;  they  were  more  fastidious  and 
jealous  of  their  social  rights  than  many  in  higher  positions."8 

8  The  Twelfth  Ouest. 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       237 

1  'Every thing  out  of  the  broad,  common  track  was  a  horror  to 
these  men,  and  to  many  of  their  village  fellows.  Strange  shadows 
that  their  eyes  could  not  pierce,  lay  upon  such,  and  they  were 
suspicious. "  9  "  She  was  a  New  England  woman,  and  she  dis 
cussed  all  topics  except  purely  material  ones  shamefacedly  with 
her  sister."10 

In  the  mid  eighties  when  she  began  her  work  the  primitive 
Puritan  element  had  vanished  from  all  but  the  more  remote  and 
sheltered  nooks  of  New  England.  The  toll  of  the  war,  the  West 
ern  rush,  and  the  call  of  the  cities  had  left  behind  the  old  and 
the  conservative  and  the  helpless,  the  last  distorted  relics  of  a 
distorting  old  regime.  To  her  these  were  the  true  New  England : 
she  would  write  the  last  act  of  the  grim  drama  that  had  begun 
at  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay.  She  recorded  it  very 
largely  in  her  first  four  volumes :  A  Humble  Romance,  twenty- 
four  short  stories  as  grim  and  austere  as  Puritanism  itself;  A 
New  England  Nun  and  Other  Stories;  Jane  Field,  a  prolonged 
short  story;  and  Pembroke,  a  Novel.  This  is  the  vital  part  of 
her  work,  the  part  that  is  to  bear  up  and  preserve  her  name  if  it 
is  to  endure. 

The  key  to  this  earlier  work  is  the  word  repression.  The  very 
style  is  puritanic;  it  is  angular,  unornamented,  severe;  it  is 
rheumatic  like  the  greater  part  of  the  characters  it  deals  with ; 
it  gasps  in  short  sentences  and  hobbles  disconnectedly.  It  deals 
ever  with  repressed  lives :  with  dwarfed  and«  anemic  old  maids 
who  have  been  exhorted  all  their  lives  to  self-examination  and  to 
the  repression  of  every  emotion  and  instinct;  with  women  un 
balanced  and  neurotic,  who  subside  at  last  into  dumb  endurance ; 
with  slaves  of  a  parochial  public  opinion  and  of  conventions 
ridiculously  narrow  hardened  into  iron  laws ;  with  lives  in  which 
the  Puritan  inflexibility  and  unquestioning  obedience  to  duty  has 
been  inherited  as  stubbornness  and  balky  setness,  as  in  Deborah 
and  Barnabas  Thayer  who  in  earlier  ages  would  have  figured  as 
martyrs  or  pilgrims. 

Her  unit  of  measure  is  short.  It  is  not  hers  to  trace  the  slow 
development  of  a  soul  through  a  long  period;  it  is  hers  to  deal 
with  climactic  episodes,  with  the  one  moment  in  a  repressed  life 
when  the  repression  gives  way  and  the  long  pent-up  forces  sweep 

»  Christmas  Jenny. 
10  Amanda  and  Love. 


238  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

all  before  them,  as  in  "The  Revolt  of  Mother,"  or  "A  Village 
Singer."  Her  effects  she  accomplishes  with  the  fewest  strokes 
possible.  Like  the  true  New  Englander  that  she  is,  she  will 
waste  not  a  word.  In  her  story  *  *  Life-Everlasting, ' '  Luella — the 
author's  miserliness  with  words  withholds  her  other  name — has 
gone  to  carry  a  pillow  to  the  farmhouse  of  Oliver  Weed.  She 
wonders  at  the  closed  and  deserted  appearance  of  the  premises. 

Luella  heard  the  cows  low  in  the  barn  as  she  opened  the  kitchen 
door.  "Where — did  all  that — blood  come  from?"  said  she. 

She  began  to  breathe  in  quick  gasps;  she  stood  clutching  her  pillow, 
and  looking.  Then  she  called :  "Mr.  Weed !  Mr.  Weed !  Where  be 
you!  Mis'  Weed!  Is  anything  the  matter!  Mis'  Weed!"  The  si 
lence  seemed  to  beat  against  her  ears.  She  went  across  the  kitchen  to 
the  bedroom.  Here  and  there  she  held  back  her  dress.  She  reached 
the  bedroom  door,  and  looked  in. 

Luella  pressed  back  across  the  kitchen  into  the  yard.  She  went  out 
into  the  yard  and  turned  towards  the  village.  She  still  carried  the  life- 
everlasting  pillow,  but  she  carried  it  as  if  her  arms  and  that  were  all 
stone.  She  met  a  woman  whom  she  knew,  and  the  woman  spoke;  but 
Luella  did  not  notice  her;  she  kept  on.  The  woman  stopped  and  looked 
after  her. 

Luella  went  to  the  house  where  the  sheriff  lived,  and  knocked.  The 
sheriff  himself  opened  the  door.  He  was  a  large,  pleasant  man.  He 
began  saying  something  facetious  about  her  being  out  calling  early,  but 
Luella  stopped  him. 

"You'd — better  go  up  to  the — Weed  house,"  said  she,  in  a  dry  voice. 
"There  's  some— trouble." 

That  is  all  we  are  told  as  to  what  Luella  saw,  though  it  comes 
out  later  that  the  man  and  his  wife  had  been  murdered  by  the 
hired  man — how  we  know  not.  There  is  a  primitiveness  about 
the  style,  its  gasping  shortness  of  sentence,  its  repetitions  like  the 
story  told  by  a  child,  its  freedom  from  all  straining  for  effect, 
its  bareness  and  grimness,  that  stamps  it  as  a  genuine  human 
document;  not  art  but  life  itself. 

For  external  nature  she  cares  little.  Her  backgrounds  are 
meager;  the  human  element  alone  interests  her.  There  is  no 
Mary  E.  Wilkins  country  as  there  is  a  Sarah  Orne  Jewett  coun 
try;  there  are  only  Mary  E.  Wilkins  people.  A  somber  group 
they  are — exceptions,  perhaps,  grim  survivals,  distortions,  yet 
absolutely  true  to  one  narrow  phase  of  New  England  life.  Her 
realism  as  she  depicts  these  people  is  as  inexorable  as  Balzac's. 
"A  Village  Lear"  would  have  satisfied  even  Maupassant.  Not 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       239 

one  jot  is  bated  from  the  full  horror  of  the  picture ;  it  is  driven 
to  its  pitiless  end  without  a  moment  of  softening.  No  detail  is 
omitted.  It  is  Pere  Goriot  reduced  to  a  chapter.  A  picture  like 
this  from  "Louisa"  grips  one  by  its  very  pitilessness : 

There  was  nothing  for  supper  but  some  bread  and  butter  and  weak 
tea,  though  the  old  man  had  his  dish  of  Indian-meal  porridge.  He 
could  not  eat  much  solid  food.  The  porridge  was  covered  with  milk 
and  molasses.  He  bent  low  over  it,  and  ate  large  spoonfuls  with  loud 
noises.  His  daughter  had  tied  a  towel  around  his  neck  as  she  would 
have  tied  a  pinafore  on  a  child.  She  had  also  spread  a  towel  over  the 
tablecloth  in  front  of  him,  and  she  watched  him  sharply  lest  he  should 
spill  his  food. 

"I  wish  I  could  have  somethin'  to  eat  that  I  could  relish  the  way  he 
does  that  porridge  and  molasses,"  said  she  [the  mother].  She  had 
scarcely  tasted  anything.  She  sipped  her  weak  tea  laboriously. 

Louisa  looked  across  at  her  mother's  meager  little  figure  in  its  neat 
old  dress,  at  her  poor  small  head  bending  over  the  teacup,  showing  the 
wide  parting  in  the  thin  hair. 

"Why  don't  you  toast  your  bread,  mother  ?"  said  she.  "I  '11  toast  it 
for  you." 

"No,  I  don't  want  it.  I  'd  jest  as  soon  have  it  this  way  as  any.  I 
don't  want  no  bread,  nohow.  I  want  somethin'  to  relish — a  herrin',  or 
a  little  mite  of  cold  meat,  or  somethin'.  I  s'pose  I  could  eat  as  well 
as  anybody  if  I  had  as  much  as  some  folks  have.  Mis'  Mitchell  was 
savin'  the  other  day  that  she  did  n't  believe  but  what  they  had  butcher's 
meat  up  to  Mis'  Nye's  every  day  in  the  week.  She  said  Jonathan  he 
went  to  Wolfsborough  and  brought  home  great  pieces  in  a  market- 
basket  every  week." 

She  is  strong  only  in  short  efforts.  She  has  small  power  of 
construction:  even  Pembroke  may  be  resolved  into  a  series  of 
short  stories.  The  setness  of  Barnabas  Thayer  is  prolonged  until 
it  ceases  to  be  convincing :  we  lose  sympathy ;  he  becomes  a  mere 
Ben  Jonson  "humor"  and  not  a  human  being.  The  story  is 
strong  only  in  its  episodes — the  cherry  party  of  the  tight-fisted 
Silas  Berry,  the  midnight  coasting  of  the  boy  Ephraim,  the  re 
moval  of  Hannah  to  the  poorhouse,  the  marriage  of  Rebecca — 
but  these  touch  the  very  heart  of  New  England.  Because  of  their 
artlessness  they  are  the  perfection  of  art. 

In  her  later  period  Miss  Wilkins  became  sophisticated  and  self- 
conscious.  The  acclaim  of  praise  that  greeted  her  short  stories 
tempted  her  to  essay  a  larger  canvas  in  wider  fields  of  art.  She 
had  awakened  to  a  realization  of  the  bareness  of  her  style  and  she 
sought  to  bring  to  her  work  ornament  and  the  literary  graces. 


240  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

She  experimented  with  verse  and  drama  and  juveniles,  with  long 
novels  and  romances,  and  even  with  tales  of  New  Jersey  life.  In 
vain.  Her  decline  began  with  Madelon,  which  is  improbable  and 
melodramatic,  and  it  continued  through  all  her  later  work.  She 
wrote  problem  novels  like  The  Portion  of  Labor,  long  and  sprawl 
ing  and  ineffective,  and  stories  like  By  the  Light  of  the  Soul,  as 
impossible  and  as  untrue  to  life  as  a  young  country  girl's  dream 
of  city  society.  As  a  novelist  and  as  a  depicter  of  life  outside  of 
her  narrow  domain,  she  has  small  equipment.  She  stands  for 
but  one  thing:  short  stories  of  the  grim  and  bare  New  England 
social  system;  sketches  austere  and  artless  which  limn  the  very 
soul  of  a  passing  old  regime;  photographs  which  are  more  than 
photographs:  which  are  threnodies. 

VI 

The  last  phase  of  the  school  may  be  studied  in  the  work  of 
Alice  Brown,  representative  of  the  influences  at  the  end  of  the 
century.  The  late  recognition  of  her  fiction — she  was  born  in 
1857 — which  placed  her  a  decade  after  Miss  Wilkins  who  was 
born  in  1862,  compelled  her  to  serve  an  apprenticeship  like  that  of 
Howells,  and  subjected  her  work  to  the  new  shaping  influences  of 
the  nineties.  When  she  did  gain  recognition  in  1895,  she  brought 
a  finished  art.  She  had  mastered  the  newly  worked-out  science 
of  the  short  story,  she  had  studied  the  English  masters— chiefest 
of  all  Stevenson,  whose  influence  so  dominated  the  closing  cen 
tury. 

She  was  not  a  realist  as  Miss  Wilkins  was  a  realist.  The  New 
England  dialect  stories  of  Meadow  Grass  were  not  put  forth  to 
indicate  the  final  field  that  she  had  chosen  for  her  art :  they  were 
experiments  just  as  all  the  others  of  her  earlier  efforts  were  ex 
periments.  Of  her  first  seven  books,  Fools  of  Nature,  with  its 
background  of  spiritualism,  was  a  serious  attempt  at  serious 
fiction  with  a  thesis  worthy  of  a  George  Eliot,  Mercy  Warren  and 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  were  biographical  and  critical  studies, 
By  Oak  and  Thorn  was  a  collection  of  travel  essays,  The  Road  to 
Castelay  was  a  collection  of  poems,  and  The  Day  of  His  Youth 
perhaps  a  romance. 

That  she  won  her  recognition  as  a  writer  of  dialect  tales  rather 
than  as  a  novelist,  a  poet,  an  essayist,  a  romancer,  was  due,  first, 
to  the  nature  of  the  times,  and,  secondly,  to  the  fact  that  the 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       241 

tales  were  a  section  of  her  own  life  written  with  fullness  of 
knowledge  and  sympathy.  She  had  been  born  and  reared  in  a 
New  Hampshire  town,  educated  in  a  country  school  and  a  rural 
11  female  seminary,"  and,  like  Rose  Terry  Cooke,  she  had  taught 
school.  Later  she  had  broken  from  this  early  area  of  her  life 
and  had  resided  in  Boston.  The  glamour  of  childhood  grew 
more  and  more  golden  over  the  life  she  had  left  behind  her ;  the 
memories  of  fragrant  summer  evenings  in  the  green  country  and 
of  the  old  homes  she  had  known  with  all  their  varied  inmates 
grew  ever  more  tender  on  her  pages  as  she  wrote.  It  was  impos 
sible  for  her  not  to  be  true  to  this  area  that  she  knew  so  com 
pletely.  Characters  like  Mrs.  Blair  and  Miss  Dyer  in  "Joint 
Owners  in  Spain,"  or  Farmer  Eli  in  "Farmer  Eli's  Vacation" 
stood  living  before  her  imagination  as  she  told  of  them.  She  had 
known  them  in  the  flesh.  If  she  were  to  paint  the  picture  at  all 
she  must  paint  it  as  it  was  in  her  heart.  To  add  to  it  or  to  sub 
tract  from  it  were  to  violate  truth  itself. 

Her  stories  differ  from  Mrs.  Cooke 's  and  Miss  Jewett's  in  a 
certain  quality  of  atmosphere — it  is  difficult  to  explain  more 
accurately.  They  have  a  quality  of  humor  and  of  pathos,  a 
sprightliness  and  freedom  about  them  that  are  all  their  own. 
They  never  fall  into  carelessness  like  so  much  of  the  work  of  Mrs. 
Stowe  and  they  are  never  poorly  constructed.  They  are  photo 
graphically  true  to  the  life  they  represent,  and  yet  they  possess, 
many  of  them,  the  beauties  and  the  graces  and  the  feeling  of 
romance.  They  add  richness  to  realism.  In  style  she  is  the 
antithesis  of  Miss  Wilkins.  There  is  beauty  in  all  of  her  prose, 
a  half -felt  tripping  of  feet  often,  a  lilting  rhythm  as  unpremedi 
tated  as  a  bird-song,  swift  turns  of  expression  that  are  near 
to  poetry.  An  inscription  in  the  Tiverton  churchyard  halts  her, 
and  as  she  muses  upon  it  she  is  wholly  a  poet : 

"The  purple  flower  of  a  maid"!  All  the  blossomy  sweetness,  the 
fragrant  lament  of  Lycidas,  lies  in  that  one  line.  Alas,  poor  love 
lies-bleeding!  And  yet  not  poor  according  to  the  barren  pity  we  ac 
cord  the  dead,  but  dowered  with  another  youth  set  like  a  crown  upon 
the  unstained  front  of  this.  Not  going  with  sparse  blossoms  ripened 
or  decayed,  but  heaped  with  buds  and  dripping  over  in  perfume.  She 
seems  so  sweet  in  her  still  loveliness,  the  empty  province  of  her  balmy 
spring,  that,  for  a  moment  fain  are  you  to  snatch  her  back  into  the 
pageant  of  your  day.  Reading  that  phrase,  you  feel  the  earth  is  poorer 
for  her  loss.  And  yet,  not  so,  since  the  world  holds  other  greater 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

worlds  as  well.  Elsewhere  she  may  have  grown  to  age  and  stature,  but 
here  she  lives  yet  in  beauteous  permanence — as  true  a  part  of  youth 
and  joy  and  rapture  as  the  immortal  figures  on  the  Grecian  urn.  While 
she  was  but  a  flying  phantom  on  the  frieze  of  time,  Death  fixed  her 
there  forever — a  haunting  spirit  in  perennial  bliss. 

Whenever  she  touches  nature  she  touches  it  as  a  poet.  She 
was  of  the  mid  nineties  which  saw  the  triumph  of  the  nature 
school.  Behind  each  of  her  stories  lies  a  rich  background  of 
mountain  or  woodland  or  meadow,  one  that  often,  as  in  "A  Sea 
Change,"  dominates  in  Thomas  Hardy  fashion  the  whole  picture. 

Only  a  comparatively  few  of  Miss  Brown's  volumes  deal  with 
the  field  with  which  her  name  is  chiefly  associated.  Meadow 
Grass,  Tiverton  Tales,  and  The  Country  Road  contain  the  best 
of  her  dialect  stories.  Her  heart  in  later  years  has  been  alto 
gether  in  other  work.  She  has  written  novels  not  provincial  in 
their  setting,  and,  unlike  Miss  Wilkins,  she  has  succeeded  in 
doing  really  distinctive  work.  She  has  the  constructive  power 
that  is  denied  so  many,  especially  women,  who  have  succeeded 
with  the  short  story.  She  has  done  dramatic  work  which  has 
won  high  rewards  and  she  has  written  poetry.  Perhaps  she  is  a 
poet  first  of  all. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

HABBIET  BEECHEB  STOWE.  The  Mayflower,  1843;  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin, 
1852;  Sunny  Memories  of  Foreign  Lands,  1854;  Dred  (Nina  Gordon), 
1856;  The  Minister's  Wooing,  1859;  The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island,  1862; 
Agnes  of  Sorrento,  1862;  House  and  Home  Papers,  1864;  Little  Foxes, 
1865;  Religious  Poems,  1867;  Queer  Little  People,  1867;  The  Chimney 
Comer,  1868;  Oldtown  Folks,  1869;  Pink  and  White  Tyranny,  1871;  Old- 
town  Fireside  Stories,  1871;  My  Wife  and  I,  1871;  We  and  Our  Neighbors, 
1875;  Poganuc  People,  1878;  A  Dog's  Mission,  1881;  The  Life  of  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe,  Charles  Edward  Stowe,  1889. 

ELIZABETH  STUABT  PHELPS  WARD.  Tiny,  1866;  The  Gates  Ajar,  1868; 
Men,  Women,  and  Ghosts,  1869;  Hedged  In,  1870;  The  Silent  Partner, 
1870;  Poetic  Studies,  1875;  The  Story  of  Avis,  1877;  An  Old  Maid's  Para 
dise,  1879;  Doctor  Zay,  1882;  Beyond  the  Gates,  1883;  Songs  of  the 
Silent  World,  1884;  The  Madonna  of  the  Tubs,  1886;  The  Gates  Between, 
1887;  Jack  the  Fisherman,  1887;  The  Struggle  for  Immortality,  1889; 
The  Master  of  the  Magicians  [with  H.  D.  Ward],  1890;  Come  Forth 
[with  II.  D.  Ward],  1890;  Fourteen  to  One,  1891;  Donald  Marcy,  1893; 
A  Singular  Life,  1894;  The  Supply  at  St.  Agatha's,  1896;  Chapters  from 
a  Life,  1896;  The  Story  of  Jesus  Christ,  1897;  Within  the  Gates,  1901; 
Successors  to  Mary  the  First,  1901;  Avery,  1902;  Trixy,  1904;  The  Man  in 
the  Case,  1906;  Walled  In,  1907. 


RECORDERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  DECLINE       243 

HARRIET  PRESCOTT  SPOFFORD.  Sir  Rohan's  Ghost,  1850;  The  Amber 
Gods  and  Other  Stories,  1863;  Azarian,  1864;  New  England  Legends, 
1871;  The  Thief  in  the  Night,  1872;  Art  Decoration  Applied  to  Furniture, 
1881;  The  Marquis  of  Carabas,  1882;  Poems,  1882;  Ballads  About  Au 
thors,  1888;  In  Titian's  Garden  and  Other  Poems,  1897;  The  Children  of 
the  Valley,  1901;  The  Great  Procession,  1902;  Four  Days  of  God,  1905; 
Old  Washington,  1906;  Old  Madame  and  Other  Tragedies,  1910. 

ROSE  TERRY  COOKE.  Poems  by  Rose  Terry,  1860;  Happy  Dodd,  1875; 
Somebody's  Neighbors,  1881;  The  Deacon's  Week,  1885;  Root-Bound  and 
Other  Sketches,  1885;  No.  A  Story  for  Boys,  1886;  The  Sphynx's  Children 
and  Other  People's,  1886;  Poems  by  Rose  Terry  Cooke  (complete),  1888: 
Steadfast:  a  Novel,  1889;  Huckleberries  Gathered  from  New  England  Hills, 
1891. 

SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT.  Deephaven,  1877;  Old  Friends  and  New,  1879; 
Country  By-Ways,  1881;  The  Mate  of  the  Daylight,  1883;  A  Country 
Doctor,  1884;  A  Marsh  Island,  1885;  A  White  Heron,  1886;  The  Story 
of  the  Normans,  1887;  The  King  of  Folly  Island,  1888;  Betty  Leicester, 
1889;  Strangers  and  Wayfarers,  1890;  A  Native  of  Winby,  1893;  Betty 
Leicester's  Christmas,  1894;  The  Life  of  Nancy,  1895;  The  Country  of  the 
Pointed  Firs,  1896;  The  Queen's  Twin,  1899;  The  Tory  Lover,  1901;  Letters 
of  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  Edited  by  Annie  Fields. 

MARY  E.  WILKINS  FREEMAN.  A  Humble  Romance,  1887;  A  New  Eng 
land  Nun,  1891;  Young  Lucretia,  1892;  Jane  Field,  1892;  Giles  Corey, 
Yeoman:  a  Play,  1893;  Pembroke,  1894;  Madelon,  1896;  Jerome,  a  Poor 
Young  Man,  1897;  Silence,  1898;  Evelina's  Garden,  1899;  The  Love  of 
Parson  Lord,  1900;  The  Heart's  Highway,  1900;  The  Portion  of  Labor, 
1901;  Understudies,  1901;  Six  Trees,  1903;  The  Wind  in  the  Rose  Bush, 
1903;  The  Givers,  1904;  Doc  Gordon,  1906;  By  the  Light  of  the  Soul, 
1907;  Shoulders  of  Atlas,  1908;  The  Winning  Lady,  1909;  The  Green 
Door,  1910;  Butterfly  House,  1912;  Yates  Pride,  1912. 

ALICE  BROWN.  Fools  of  Nature,  1887;  Meadow  Grass,  1895;  Mercy 
Otis  Warren,  1896;  By  Oak  and  Thorn,  1896;  The  Day  of  His  Youth, 
1896;  The  Road  to  Castaly,  1896;  Robert  Louis  Stevenson — a  Study  (with 
Louise  Imogen  Guiney),  1897;  Tiverton  Tales,  1899;  King's  End,  1901; 
Margaret  Warrener,  1901;  The  Mannerings,  High  Noon,  Paradise,  The 
Country  Road,  The  Court  of  Love,  1906;  Rose  MacLeod,  1908;  The  Story 
of  Thyrza,  1909;  County  Neighbors,  John  Winterbourne's  Family,  1910; 
The  One-Footed  Fairy,  1911;  The  Secret  of  the  Clan,  1912;  Vanishing 
Points,  Robin  Hood's  Barn,  1913;  Children  of  Earth,  [$10,000  prize 
drama],  1915. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  NEW  ROMANCE 

The  novelists  who  began  their  work  in  the  seventies  found 
themselves  in  a  dilemma.  On  one  side  was  the  new  school  which 
was  becoming  more  and  more  insistent  that  literature  in  America 
must  be  a  thing  American,  colored  by  American  soil,  and  vivid 
and  vital  with  the  new  spirit  of  Ibsen,  Tolstoy,  Hardy,  Maupas 
sant,  Howells,  that  was  thrilling  everywhere  like  the  voice  of  a 
coming  era.  But  on  the  other  hand  there  was  the  firmly  set  tra 
dition  that  the  new  world  was  barren  of  literary  material,  that 
it  lay  spick  and  span  with  no  romantic  backgrounds  save  per 
haps  the  Dutch  Hudson  and  old  Puritan  Salem  and  colonial  Bos 
ton.  As  late  as  1872  the  North  American  Review  declared  that 
the  true  writer  of  fiction  "must  idealize.  The  idealizing  novel 
ists  will  be  the  real  novelists.  All  truth  does  not  lie  in  facts."  l 
And  it  further  declared  that  he  must  look  away  from  his  own 
land,  where  there  is  no  shadow  and  no  antiquity,  into  the  un 
charted  fields  of  the  imagination.  "One  would  say  that  the 
natural  tendency  of  the  American  novelist  would  be  toward 
romance ;  that  the  very  uniformity  of  our  social  life  would  offer 
nothing  tempting  to  the  writer,  unless  indeed  to  the  satirist. ' ' 1 

It  was  the  voice  of  the  school  that  had  ruled  the  mid  century, 
a  school  that  was  still  alive  and  was  still  a  dominating  force  of 
which  young  writers  were  tremendously  conscious.  The  reading 
public  was  not  prepared  for  the  new  realism:  it  had  been  nur 
tured  on  The  Token  and  The  Talisman.  The  new  must  come 
not  as  a  revolution,  swift  and  sudden;  but  as  an  evolution,  slow 
and  imperceptible.  During  the  seventies  even  Howells  and 
James  were  romancers ;  romancers,  however,  in  process  of  change. 

For  the  seventies  in  the  history  of  American  fiction  was  a 
period  of  compromise  and  transition.  The  new  school  would 
be  romantic  and  yet  at  the  same  time  it  would  be  realistic.  The 

ijforth  American  Review,   115:373. 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  245 

way  opened  unexpectedly.  The  widening  of  the  American  hori 
zon,  the  sudden  vogue  of  the  Pike  literature,  the  new  exploiting 
of  the  continent  in  all  its  wild  nooks  and  isolated  neighborhoods 
— strange  areas  as  unknown  to  the  East  as  the  California  mines 
and  the  canebrakes  of  the  great  river — and  above  all  the  emer 
gence  of  the  South,  brought  with  it  another  discovery:  Haw 
thorne  and  the  mid-century  school  had  declared  romance  with 
American  background  impossible  simply  because  in  their  pro 
vincial  narrowness  they  had  supposed  that  America  was  bounded 
on  the  south  and  west  by  the  Atlantic  and  the  Hudson.  America 
was  discovered  to  be  full  of  romantic  material.  It  had  a  past 
not  connected  at  all  with  the  Knickerbockers  or  even  the  Pil 
grims.  Behind  whole  vast  areas  of  it  lay  the  shadow  of  old 
forgotten  regimes,  '  *  picturesque  and  gloomy  wrongs, ' '  with  ruins 
and  mystery  and  vague  tradition. 

One  of  the  earliest  results,  then,  of  the  new  realism,  strangely 
enough,  was  a  new  romanticism,  new  American  provinces  added 
to  the  bounds  of  Arcady.  The  first  gold  of  it,  appropriately 
enough,  came  from  California,  where  Harte  and  Mrs.  Jack 
son  caught  glimpses  of  an  old  Spanish  civilization  alive  only  in 
the  picturesque  ruins  of  its  Missions.  Quickly  it  was  found 
again,  rich  and  abundant,  in  New  Orleans,  where  Spain  and  then 
France  had  held  dominion  in  a  vague  past;  then  in  the  planta 
tions  of  the  old  South  where  Page  and  others  caught  the  last 
glories  of  that  fading  cavalier  civilization  which  had  been  pro 
longed  through  a  century  of  twilight  by  the  archaic  institution 
of  slavery;  and  then  even  in  the  spick-and-span  new  central 
West  with  its  traditions  of  a  chivalrous  old  French  regime. 

America,  indeed,  was  full  of  romantic  area,  full  of  a  truly 
romantic  atmosphere,  for  it  had  been  for  centuries  the  battle 
field  of  races,  the  North — England,  New  England,  Anglo-Saxons 
— against  the  South — Spain,  France,  the  slave-holding  Cavaliers. 
And  romance  in  all  lands  is  the  record  of  the  old  crushed  out 
by  the  new,  the  dim  tradition  of  a  struggle  between  North  and 
South :  the  South  with  its  tropic  imagination,  its  passion,  its 
beauty,  its  imperious  pride,  its  barbaric  background;  the  North 
with  its  logic,  its  discipline,  its  perseverance,  its  passionless  force. 
Romance  has  ever  held  as  its  theme  the  passing  of  an  old  South 
ern  regime  before  the  barbarians  of  the  North.  And  romance 
in  America  has  centered  always  in  the  South.  Realism  might 


246  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

flourish  in  Boston  and  the  colder  classical  atmospheres,  but  not 
along  the  gulf  and  the  tropic  rivers.  The  reading  public,  how 
ever,  and  the  great  publishing  houses  were  in  the  North.  The 
result  was  compromise:  the  new  romanticism,  Southern  in  its 
atmosphere  and  spirit,  Northern  in  its  truth  to  life  and  condi 
tions. 

I 

Harte  in  Gabriel  Conroy  glimpsed  the  new  fields  of  romance; 

George  Washington  Cable  (1844 ),  the  earliest  of  the  new 

Southern  school,  was  the  first  fully  to  enter  them.  His  gateway 
was  old  New  Orleans,  most  romantic  of  Southern  cities,  unknown 
to  Northern  readers  until  his  pen  revealed  it.  It  seemed  hardly 
possible  that  the  new  world  possessed  such  a  Bagdad  of  wonder : 
old  Spanish  aristocracy,  French  chivalry  of  a  forgotten  ancien 
regime,  Creoles,  Acadians  from  the  Grand  Pre  dispersion,  ad 
venturers  from  all  the  picturesque  ports  of  the  earth,  slavery 
with  its  barbaric  atmosphere  and  its  shuddery  background  of 
dread,  and  behind  it  all  and  around  it  all  like  a  mighty  moat 
shutting  it  close  in  upon  itself  and  rendering  all  else  in  the  world 
a  mere  hearsay  and  dream,  the  swamps  and  lagoons  of  the  great 
river. 

Cable  was  a  native  of  the  old  city.  During  a  happy  boy 
hood  he  played  and  rambled  over  the  whole  of  it  and  learned 
to  know  it  as  only  a  boy  can  know  the  surroundings  of  his  home. 
His  boyhood  ended  when  he  was  fourteen  with  the  death  of  his 
father  and  the  responsibility  that  devolved  upon  him  to  help 
support  his  mother  and  her  little  family  left  with  scanty  means. 
There  was  to  be  no  more  schooling.  He  marked  boxes  in  the  cus 
tom  house  until  the  war  broke  out,  and  then  at  seventeen  he 
enlisted  in  the  Confederate  army  and  served  to  the  end.  Re 
turning  to  New  Orleans,  he  found  employment  in  a  newpaper 
office,  where  he  proved  a  failure;  he  studied  surveying  until  he 
was  forced  by  malarial  fever  caught  in  the  swamps  to  abandon 
it;  then,  after  a  slow  recovery,  he  entered  the  employ  of  a  firm 
of  cotton  factors  and  for  years  served  them  as  an  accountant. 
It  was  an  unpromising  beginning.  At  thirty-five  he  was  still 
recording  transfers  of  cotton,  and  weights  and  prices  and  com 
missions. 

But  his  heart,  like  Charles  Lamb's,  was  in  volumes  far  differ- 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  247 

ent  from  those  upon  his  office  desk.  He  had  always  been  a 
studious  youth.  He  had  read  much:  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Poe, 
Irving,  Scott;  and,  like  a  true  native  of  the  old  city  to  whom 
French  was  a  mother  tongue,  Hugo,  Merimee,  About.  He  loved 
also  to  pore  over  antiquarian  records:  Relations  of  the  priest 
explorers,  and  old  French  documents  and  writings.  His  first 
impulse  to  write  came  to  him  as  he  sat  amid  these  dusty  records. 
' '  It  would  give  me  pleasure, ' '  he  once  wrote  in  a  letter,  ' '  to  tell 
you  how  I  came  to  drop  into  the  writing  of  romances,  but  I  can 
not;  I  just  dropt.  Money,  fame,  didactic  or  controversial  im- 
,  pulse  I  scarcely  felt  a  throb  of.  I  just  wanted  to  do  it  because 
it  seemed  a  pity  for  the  stuff  to  go  so  to  waste. ' ' 

Cable's  first  story,  "  'Sieur  George,"  appeared  in  Scribner's 
Monthly  in  October,  1873.  Edward  King,  touring  the  Southern 
States  in  1872  for  his  series  of  papers  entitled  The  Great  South, 
had  found  the  young  accountant  pottering  away  at  his  local  his 
tory  and  his  studies  of  local  conditions  and  had  secured  some  of  his 
work  for  Dr.  Holland.  During  the  next  three  years  five  other 
articles  were  published  in  the  magazine  and  one,  ' '  Posson  Jone, ' ' 
in  Applet  on' s,  but  they  caused  no  sensation.  It  was  not  until 
1879,  when  the  seven  stories  were  issued  in  book  form  as  Old 
Creole  Days,  that  recognition  came.  The  long  delay  was  good 
for  Cable:  it  compelled  him,  in  Hawthorne  fashion,  to  brood 
over  his  early  work  in  his  rare  intervals  of  leisure,  to  contemplate 
each  piece  a  long  time,  and  to  finish  it  and  enrich  it.  He  put 
forth  no  immaturities ;  he  began  to  publish  at  the  point  where  his 
art  was  perfect. 

The  reception  accorded  to  Old  Creole  Days  was  like  that  ac 
corded  to  Harte's  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp.  It  took  its  place  at 
once  as  a  classic,  and  the  verdict  has  never  been  questioned. 
There  is  about  the  book,  and  the  two  books  which  quickly  fol 
lowed  it,  an  exotic  quality,  an  aura  of  strangeness,  that  is  like 
nothing  else  in  our  literature.  They  seem  not  American  at  all ; 
surely  such  a  background  and  such  an  atmosphere  as  that  never 
could  have  existed  ' '  within  the  bounds  of  our  stalwart  republic. ' ' 
They  are  romance,  one  feels;  pure  creations  of  fancy,  prolonga 
tions  of  the  Longfellowism  of  the  mid  century — and  yet,  as  one 
reads  on  and  on,  the  conviction  grows  that  they  are  not  romance ; 
they  are  really  true.  Surely  ' '  Posson  Jone ' '  and  ' l  Madame  Del- 
phine"  are  not  creations  of  fancy.  The  elided  and  softly  lisping 


248  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

dialect,  broken-down  French  rather  than  debased  English,  is  not 
an  invention  of  the  author's:  it  carries  conviction  the  more  one 
studies  it ;  it  is  not  brought  in  to  show :  it  adds  at  every  point  to 
the  reality  of  the  work.  And  the  carefully  worked-in  back 
grounds — let  Lafcadio  II earn  speak,  who  settled  in  the  city  a  few 
months  after  "Jean-ah  Poquelin"  came  out  in  Scribner's 
Monthly: 

The  strict  perfection  of  his  Creole  architecture  is  readily  recognized 
by  all  who  have  resided  in  New  Orleans.  Each  one  of  those  charming- 
pictures  of  places — veritable  pastels — was  painted  after  some  carefully 
selected  model  of  French  or  Franco-Spanish  origin — typifying  fashions 
of  building  which  prevailed  in  the  colonial  days.  .  .  .  The  author  of 
Madame  Delphine  must  have  made  many  a  pilgrimage  into  the  quaint 
district,  to  study  the  wrinkled  faces  of  the  houses,  or  perhaps  to  read 
the  queer  names  upon  the  signs — as  Balzac  loved  to  do  in  old-fashioned 
Paris.2 

It  is  realism,  and  yet  how  far  removed  from  Zola  and  Flau 
bert — Flaubert  with  his  "sentiment  is  the  devil"!  It  is  realism 
tempered  with  romance ;  it  is  the  new  romance  of  the  transition. 
There  is  seemingly  no  art  about  it,  no  striving  for  effect,  and 
there  is  no  exhibition  of  quaint  and  unusual  things  just  because 
they  are  quaint  and  unusual.  Rather  are  we  transported  into 
a  charmed  atmosphere,  "the  tepid,  orange-scented  air  of  the 
South,"  with  the  soft  Creole  patois  about  us  and  romance  become 
real.  The  very  style  is  Creole — Creole  as  Cable  knew  the  Cre 
oles  of  the  quadroon  type.  There  is  a  childish  simplicity  about 
it,  and  there  is  a  lightness,  an  epigrammatic  finesse,  an  elision  of 
all  that  can  be  suggested,  that  is  Gallic  and  not  Saxon  at  all. 

One  can  feel  this  exotic  quality  most  fully  in  the  portraits  of 
women:  'Tite  Poulette,  Madame  Delphine,  Aurora  Nancanou, 
Clotilde,  and  the  others,  portraits  etched  in  with  infinitesimal 
lightness  of  touch,  suggested  rather  than  described,  felt  rather 
than  seen.  These  are  not  Northern  women,  these  daintily  femi 
nine  survivals  of  a  decadent  nobility,  these  shrinking,  coquettish, 
clinging,  distant,  tearful,  proud,  explosive,  half  barbarous,  alto 
gether  bewitching  creatures.  A  suggestion  here,  a  glimpse  there, 
an  exclamation,  a  flash  of  the  eyes,  and  they  are  alive  and  real 
as  few  feminine  creations  in  the  fiction  of  any  period.  One  may 
forget  the  story,  but  one  may  not  forget  Madame  Delphine.  If 

2  "Scenes  of  Cable's  Romances,"  Century,  5:40. 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  249 

one  would  understand  the  secret  of  Cable's  art,  that  Gallic 
lightness  of  touch,  that  subtle  elision,  that  perfect  balance  be 
tween  the  suggested  and  the  expressed,  let  him  read  the  last  chap 
ter  of  The  Grandissimcs.  It  is  a  Cable  epitome. 

"Posson  Jone,"  "Jean-ah  Poquelin,"  and  Madame  Delphi-tie t 
which,  despite  its  length  and  its  separate  publication,  is  a  short 
story  belonging  to  the  Old  Creole  Days  group,  are  among  the 
most  perfect  of  American  short  stories  and  mark  the  highest 
reach  of  Cable's  art. 

The  Grandissimes,  his  first  long  romance,  appeared  in  1880. 
Never  was  work  of  art  painted  on  broader  canvas  or  with  ele 
ments  more  varied  and  picturesque.  Though  centering  in  a 
little  nook  among  the  bayous,  it  contains  all  Louisiana.  Every 
where  perspectives  down  a  long  past :  glimpses  of  the  explorers, 
family  histories,  old  forgotten  wrongs,  vendettas,  survivals  from 
a  feudal  past,  wild  traditions,  superstitions.  Grandissime  and 
Fusilier,  young  men  of  the  D'Iberville  exploring  party,  get  lost 
in  the  swamps.  ''When  they  had  lain  down  to  die  and  had 
only  succeeded  in  falling  to  sleep,  the  Diana  of  the  Tchoupi- 
toulas,  ranging  the  magnolia  groves  with  bow  and  quiver,  came 
upon  them  in  all  the  poetry  of  their  hope-forsaken  strength  and 
beauty,  and  fell  sick  of  love."  The  love  of  this  Indian  queen 
begins  the  romance.  Both  eager  to  possess  her,  they  can  settle  the 
matter  only  with  dice.  Fusilier  wins  and  becomes  the  founder 
of  a  proud  line,  semibarbarous  in  its  haughtiness  and  beauty, 
the  Capulets  to  De  Grapion's  Montagues.  The  culmination 
comes  a  century  later  when  the  old  feudal  regime  in  Louisiana 
was  closed  by  Napoleon  and  the  remnants  of  the  warring  fam 
ilies  were  united  according  to  the  approved  Montague-Capulet 
formula. 

But  the  theme  of  the  book  is  wider  than  this  quarrel  of  fam 
ilies,  wider  than  the  conflict  of  two  irreconcilable  civilizations 
and  the  passing  of  the  outworn.  In  a  vague  way  it  centers  in 
the  episode  of  Bras  Coupe,  the  African  king  who  refused  to  be 
a  slave  and  held  firm  until  his  haughty  soul  was  crushed  out  with 
inconceivable  brutality.  The  cumulative  and  soul-withering 
power  of  an  ancient  wrong,  the  curse  of  a  dying  man  which  works 
its  awful  way  until  the  pure  love  of  innocent  lovers  removes  it — 
it  is  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  transferred  to  the  barbar 
ous  swamps  of  the  Atchafalaya. 


250  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  strangeness  of  the  book  grows  upon  one  as  one  reads. 
It  is  a  book  of  lurid  pictures — the  torture  and  death  of  Bras 
Coupe,  the  murder  of  the  negresse  Clemence,  which  in  sheer  hor 
ror  and  brutal,  unsparing  realism  surpasses  anything  in  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,  anything  indeed  in  the  Russian  realists.  It  is  a 
book  top  with  a  monotone  of  fear :  the  nameless  dread  that  comes 
of  holding  down  a  race  by  force,  or  as  Joel  C.  Harris  has  phrased 
it,  "that  vague  and  mysterious  danger  that  seemed  to  be  forever 
lurking  on  the  outskirts  of  slavery,  ready  to  sound  a  shrill  and 
ghostly  signal  in  the  impenetrable  swamps  and  steal  forth  under 
the  midnight  stars  to  murder  and  rapine  and  pillage";  the 
superstitious  thrill  when  at  dead  of  night  throbs  up  from  a 
neighboring  slave  yard  "the  monotonous  chant  and  machine- 
like  time-beat  of  the  African  dance ' ' ;  the  horror  of  finding  morn 
ing  after  morning  on  one's  pillow  voodoo  warnings  and  ghastly 
death  charms  placed  seemingly  by  supernatural  hands.  No  one 
has  ever  surpassed  Cable  in  making  felt  this  uncanny  side  of  the 
negro.  His  characterization  of  the  voodoo  quadroon  woman 
Palmyre  with  her  high  Latin,  Jaloff- African  ancestry,  her  ' '  bar 
baric  and  magnetic  beauty  that  startled  the  beholder  like  the  un 
expected  drawing  out  of  a  jeweled  sword,"  her  physical  perfec 
tion — lithe  of  body  as  a  tigress  and  as  cruel,  witching  and  allur 
ing,  yet  a  thing  of  horror,  "a  creature  that  one  would  want  to 
find  chained" — it  fingers  at  one's  heart  and  makes  one  fear. 

And  with  all  this  strangeness,  this  flash  after  flash  of  vivid 
characterization,  a  style  to  match.  "Victor  Hugo,"  one  ex 
claims  often  as  one  reads.  Let  us  quote,  say  from  chapter  five. 
The  stars  are  Cable's: 

There  Georges  De  Qrapion  settled,  with  the  laudable  determination 
to  make  a  fresh  start  against  the  mortifyingly  numerous  Grandissimes. 

"My  father's  policy  was  every  way  bad,"  he  said  to  his  spouse ;  "it  is 
useless,  and  probably  wrong,  this  trying  to  thin  them  out  by  duels;  we 
will  try  another  plan.  Thank  you,"  he  added,  as  she  handed  his  coat 
back  to  him,  with  the  shoulder-straps  cut  off.  In  pursuance  of  the  new 
plan,  Madame  De  Grapion — the  precious  little  heroine! — before  the 
myrtles  offered  another  crop  of  berries,  bore  him  a  boy  not  much 
smaller  (saith  tradition)  than  herself. 

Only  one  thing  qualified  the  father's  elation.  On  that  very  day  Numa 
Grandissime  (Brahmin-Mandarin  de  Grandissime),  a  mere  child,  re 
ceived  from  Governor  De  Vaudreuil  a  cadetship. 

"Never  mind,  Messieurs  Grandissime,  go  on  with  your  tricks;  we 
shall  see!  Ha!  we  shall  see!" 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  251 

"We  shall  see  what?"  asked  a  remote  relative  of  that  family.  "Will 
Monsieur  be  so  good  as  to  explain  himself1?" 

********** 

Bang !     Bang ! 
Alas,  Madame  De  Grapion! 

It  may  be  recorded  that  no  affair  of  honor  in  Louisiana  ever  left  a 
braver  little  widow. 

It  is  French,  too,  in  its  sudden  turns,  its  fragmentary  para 
graphs,  its  sly  humor,  its  swift  summings-up  with  an  epigram : 

"Now,  sir,"  thought  he  to  himself,  "we  '11  return  to  our  senses." 
•'Now  I  '11  put  on  my  feathers  again,"  says  the  plucked  bird. 

But  as  one  reads  on  one  realizes  more  and  more  that  this  style 
comes  from  no  mere  imitation  of  a  master :  it  is  Creole ;  it  is  the 
style  that  is  the  counterpart  of  the  Creole  temperament.  It  is 
verisimilitude;  it  is  interpretation. 

Thus  far  the  strength  of  the  book;  there  are  weaknesses  as 
great.  Cable  failed,  as  Harte  failed,  as  most  of  the  masters 
of  the  short  story  have  failed,  in  constructive  power.  The  mag 
nificent  thesis  of  the  romance  is  not  worked  out ;  it  is  barely  sug 
gested  rather  than  made  to  dominate  the  piece.  Moreover,  the  in 
terest  does  not  accumulate  and  culminate  at  the  end.  It  is  a 
rich  mass  of  materials  rather  than  a  finished  romance.  The  em 
phasis  is  laid  upon  characters,  episodes,  conditions,  atmosphere, 
to  the  neglect  of  construction.  From  it  Cable  might  have  woven 
a  series  of  perfect  short  stories :  some  parts  indeed,  like  the  tale 
of  Bras  Coupe,  are  complete  short  stories  as  they  stand.  The 
book  is  a  gallery  rather  than  a  single  work  of  art. 

Dr.  Sevier,  1885,  marks  the  beginning  of  Cable's  later  style, 
the  beginning  of  the  decline  in  his  art.  The  year  before  he  had 
taken  up  his  permanent  residence  in  Massachusetts  and  now  as 
a  literary  celebrity,  with  Boston  not  far,  he  became  self-conscious 
and  timid.  His  art  had  matured  in  isolation ;  there  had  been  an 
elemental  quality  about  it  that  had  come  from  his  very  narrow 
ness  and  lack  of  formal  education.  In  the  classic  New  England 
atmosphere  the  Gallic  element,  the  naive  simplicity,  the  elfin 
charm  that  had  made  his  early  writings  like  no  others,  faded 
out  of  his  art.  It  was  as  if  Burns  after  the  Kilmarnock  edition 
bad  studied  poetry  at  Oxford  and  then  had  settled  in  literary 
liondon.  Doctor  Sevier  is  not  a  romance  at  all;  it  is  a  realistic 


252  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

novel  of  the  Howells  type,  a  study  of  the  Civil  War  period  as 
it  had  passed  under  Cable's  own  eyes,  with  no  plot  and  no  cul 
minating  love  interest.  It  is  a  running  chronicle  of  ten  years  in 
the  lives  of  John  and  Mary  Richling,  tedious  at  times,  impeded 
with  problem  discussion  and  philosophizing.  Its  strength  lies 
in  its  characterization :  the  Italian  Ristofalo  and  his  Irish  wife  are 
set  off  to  the  life;  but  why  should  the  creator  of  Madame  Del- 
phine  and  Posson  Jone  and  Palmyre  turn  to  Irish  and  Italian 
characterization?  The  story,  too,  has  the  same  defects  as  The 
Grandissimes :  it  lacks  proportion  and  balance.  With  a  large 
canvas  Cable  becomes  always  awkward  and  ineffective.  With 
Bonaventure,  graphic  as  parts  of  it  unquestionably  are,  one  posi 
tively  loses  patience.  Its  plan  is  chaotic.  At  the  end,  where 
should  come  the  climax  of  the  plot,  are  inserted  three  long  chap 
ters  telling  with  minute  and  terrifying  realism  the  incidents  of 
a  flood  in  the  canebrakes.  It  is  magnificent,  yet  it  is  "lumber." 
It  is  introduced  apparently  to  furnish  background  for  the  death 
of  the  "Cajun,"  but  the  "Cajun"  is  only  an  incidental  figure 
in  the  book.  To  deserve  such  "limelight"  he  should  have  been 
the  central  character  who  had  been  hunted  with  increasing  in 
terest  up  to  the  end  and  his  crime  and  his  punishment  should 
have  been  the  central  theme. 

With  Madame  Delphine  (1881)  had  closed  the  first  and  the 
great  period  in  Cable's  literary  career.  The  second  period  was 
a  period  of  miscellany:  journalized  articles  on  the  history  and 
the  characteristics  of  the  Creoles,  on  New  Orleans  and  its  life, 
on  Louisiana,  its  history  and  traditions,  on  phases  of  social  re 
form.  Necessary  as  this  work  may  have  been,  one  feels  inclined 
to  deplore  it.  When  one  has  discovered  new  provinces  in  the 
realm  of  gold  one  does  not  well,  it  would  seem,  to  lay  aside  his 
magic  flute  and  prepare  guide  books  to  the  region. 

The  New  England  atmosphere  brought  to  life  a  native  area  in 
Cable.  His  mother  had  been  of  New  England  ancestry.  Moral 
wrestlings,  questions  of  reform,  problems  of  conscience,  were  a 
part  of  his  birthright.  One  feels  it  even  in  his  earliest  work: 
he  had  seen,  we  feel,  the  problem  of  The  Grandissimes  before  he 
had  found  the  story.  After  his  removal  to  Northampton,  Massa 
chusetts,  it  may  be  said  that  reform  work  became  his  real  profes 
sion.  Not  that  we  criticize  his  choice,  for  life  ever  is  greater 
than  mere  art;  we  record  it  simply  because  it  explains.  He 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  253 

formed  home  culture  clubs  for  the  education  and  the  esthetic 
culture  of  wage-earners,  arid  conducted  a  magazine  in  the  inter 
est  of  the  work;  he  interested  himself  actively  in  the  cause  of 
the  negro;  so  actively,  indeed,  that  after  his  Silent  South  and 
The  Negro  Question  and  the  problem  novel  John  March,  South 
erner,  the  South  practically  disowned  him. 

His  third  period  begins,  perhaps,  with  his  novel  Strong  Hearts 
in  1899.  The  pen  that  so  long  had  been  dipped  in  controversy 
and  journalism  and  philanthropic  propaganda  again  essayed 
fiction,  but  it  was  too  late.  The  old  witchery  was  gone.  His 
later  novels,  all  his  fiction  indeed  after  Madame  Delphine,  with 
the  exception  perhaps  of  parts  of  Bonaventure,  read  as  if  writ 
ten  by  a  disciple  of  the  earlier  Cable.  The  verve,  the  sly  humor, 
the  Gallic  finesse,  the  Creole  strangeness  and  charm,  have  dis 
appeared.  There  is  a  tightening  in  the  throat  as  one  reads  the 
last  page  of  Madame  Delphine,  there  is  a  flutter  of  the  heart  as 
one  reads  the  love  story  of  Honore  and  Aurora,  but  nothing 
grips  one  as  he  reads  The  Cavalier.  A  pretty  little  story,  un 
doubtedly,  but  is  it  possible  that  the  author  of  it  once  wrote 
"Posson  Jone"  and  "Jean-ah  Poquelin"?  And  Gideon' 's 
Band,  a  romance  with  an  attempt  to  win  back  the  old  witchery 
of  style — it  was  all  in  vain.  Why  say  more  ? 

Cable  as  a  short  story  writer,  a  maker  of  miniatures  with  mar 
velous  skill  of  touch,  was  most  successful  perhaps  with  dainty 
femininities  of  the  old  regime.  Once,  twice,  thrice  the  light  of 
romance  glowed  upon  his  page.  Then  he  became  a  reformer, 
a  journalist,  a  man  with  a  problem.  But  he  who  gave  to  Ameri 
can  literature  Madame  Delphine  and  Old  Creole  Days  need  not 
fear  the  verdict  of  coming  days.  Already  have  these  works  be 
come  classics. 

II 

The  old  Spanish  regime  in  America  furnished  the  theme  of 
Lewis  Wallace's  (1827-1905)  first  romance,  The  Fair  God,  pub 
lished  the  year  "  'Sieur  George"  appeared  in  Scribner's.  He 
had  returned  from  the  Mexican  War  interested  in  Aztec  an 
tiquities.  After  the  Civil  War,  in  which  he  took  a  prominent 
part,  he  began  in  the  intervals  of  his  law  practice  to  write  a  mili 
tary  romance  centering  about  Cortez  and  the  conquest,  and  in 
1873,  through  the  efforts  of  Whitelaw  Reid,  succeeded  in  having 


254  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

it  published  in  Boston.  It  was  not,  however,  until  1884,  after 
the  enormous  popularity  of  Ben  Hur,  that  it  was  discovered  by 
the  reading  public.  It  is  really  better  in  workmanship  and 
proportions  than  its  more  highly  colored  and  vastly  more  ex 
ploited  companion;  it  moves  strongly,  its  battle  scenes  have  a 
resonance  and  excitement  about  them  that  make  them  comparable 
even  with  Scott 's,  but  its  tendency  is  to  sentiment  and  melo 
drama  :  it  is  a  blending  of  Prescott  and  Bulwer-Lytton. 

A  far  more  distinctive  study  of  old  Spanish  days  is  to  be 
found  in  Helen  Hunt  Jackson's  Ramona,  undoubtedly  the 
strongest  romance  of  the  period.  Mrs.  Jackson  was  a  daughter 
of  Professor  Nathan  \V.  Fiske  of  Amherst,  Massachusetts,  and 
until  the  last  decade  of  her  life  was  a  resident  of  her  native 
New  England.  Not  until  she  was  thirty-five  and  had  been  bereft 
of  husband  and  children  did  she  attempt  literature.  Her  first 
form  of  expression  was  poetry,  the  short,  sharp  cry  of  desola 
tion,  narrowly  personal  and  feminine.  Then  she  wrote  travel 
sketches  and  juveniles  and  moral  essays,  and  then  an  outpouring 
of  fiction  intense  and  sentimental.  During  the  seventies  and  the 
early  eighties  her  work  was  in  all  the  magazines.  So  versatile 
and  abundant  was  she  that  at  one  time  Dr.  Holland  seriously 
contemplated  an  issue  of  Scribner's  made  up  wholly  of  her  con 
tributions. 

To  almost  nothing  of  her  work,  save  that  at  the  very  last, 
did  she  sign  her  own  name.  She  had  an  aversion  to  publicity 
that  became  really  a  mannerism.  Her  early  work  she  signed 
variously  or  not  at  all,  then  for  a  time  she  settled  upon  the  ini 
tials  "H.  H."  It  is  no  secret  now  that  she  wrote  the  much- 
speculated-upon  novels  Mercy  Philbrick's  Choice  and  Hcttji's 
Strange  History  in  the  No-Name  Series,  and  that  the  Saxe  Holm 
Stories,  which  furnished  the  literary  mystery  of  the  seventies, 
were  from  her  pen.  They  are  love  stories  of  the  Lamplighter 
school  of  fiction,  sentimental,  over-intense,  moralizing.  General 
and  colorless  as  most  of  them  are,  they  here  and  there  display  a 
rare  power  of  characterization  and  a  sharply  drawn  study  of 
background  and  conditions.  Parts  of  "Farmer  Bassett's  Ro 
mance,"  with  its  analysis  of  the  "pagan  element"  in  New  Eng 
land  character,  are  worthy  of  Mary  E.  Wilkins.  The  stories, 
however,  belong  with  the  old  rather  than  the  new,  and  have  been 
forgotten. 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  255 

It  is  impossible  to  understand  "H.  H."  without  taking  into 
account  her  New  Englandism.  She  was  a  daughter  of  the 
Brahmins,  in  many  ways  a  counterpart  of  Elizabeth  Stuart 
Phelps — intensely  conscientious,  emotional,  eager  in  the  reform 
of  abuses,  brilliant,  impetuous.  While  visiting  California  in 
the  mid  seventies  she  came  in  contact  with  the  Indian  problem 
and  with  characteristic  impulsiveness  set  ont  to  arouse  the  na 
tion.  After  six  months  of  intense  work  in  the  Lenox  library 
of  New  York  she  published  her  Century  of  Dishonor,  a  bitter 
arraignment  of  the  national  Indian  policy,  and  at  her  own  ex 
pense  sent  a  copy  to  every  member  of  Congress.  As  a  result 
she  was  appointed  one  of  two  commissioners  to  examine  and  re 
port  upon  "the  condition  and  need  of  the  Mission  Indians  of 
California."  Her  report  was  thorough  and  businesslike,  but  it 
accomplished  little. 

Then  she  conceived  the  purpose  of  enlarging  her  area  of  ap 
peal  by  the  publication  of  a  story — on  the  title  page  it  stands 
Ramona.  A  Story.  The  problem  preceded  plot  and  materials 
and  background.  "You  have  never  fully  realized,"  she  wrote 
only  a  few  weeks  before  her  death,  "how  for  the  last  four  years 
my  whole  heart  has  been  full  of  the  Indian  cause — how  I  have 
felt,  as  the  Quakers  say,  'a  concern '  to  work  for  it.  My  Cen 
tury  of  Dishonor  and  Ramona  are  the  only  things  I  have  done  of 
which  I  am  glad  now. ' ' 3  And  earlier  than  that  she  had  written : 
"I  have  for  three  or  four  years  longed  to  write  a  story  that 
should  Hell'  on  the  Indian  question.  But  I  knew  I  could  not  do 
it;  I  knew  I  had  no  background — no  local  color."14 

Ramona  was  conceived  of,  therefore,  as  a  tract,  as  a  piece  of 
propaganda,  like  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps 's  Loveliness.  It  was 
written  with  passion,  flaming  hot  from  a  woman's  heart — not 
many  have  been  the  romances  written  in  heat.  In  this  one  re 
spect  it  may  be  likened  to  Mrs.  Stowe's  great  work,  but  to  call 
it,  as  so  often  it  has  been  called,  "the  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  of  the 
Indian, "  is  to  speak  with  inaptness.  The  book  is  a  romance,  and 
only  a  romance ;  its  whole  appeal  is  the  appeal  of  romance.  She 
had  found  at  last  her  background,  but  it  was  a  background  that 
dominated  and  destroyed  her  problem.  Unconsciously  she  sur 
rendered  herself  to  the  charm  of  it  until  to-day  the  book  is  no 

s  The  Nation,   August  20,    1885. 
*The  Atlantic  Monthly,  86:713. 


256  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

more  a  problem  novel  than  is  the  House  of  the  Seven  Gables, 
which  also  makes  use  of  the  excesses  and  crimes  of  a  system. 

No  background  could  be  more  fitted  for  romance:  southern 
California  with  its  "delicious,  languid,  semi-tropic  summer"; 
the  old  Spanish  regime,  "half  barbaric,  half  elegant,  wholly 
generous  and  free  handed, "  "when  the  laws  of  the  Indies  were 
still  the  law  of  the  land,  and  its  old  name,  'New  Spain/  was  an 
ever-present  link  and  stimulus";5  and  over  it  all  like  a  soft, 
old-world  atmosphere  the  Romish  church  with  its  mystery  and 
its  medieval  splendor.  "It  was  a  picturesque  life,  with  more  of 
sentiment  and  gaiety  in  it,  more  also  that  was  truly  dramatic, 
more  romance,  than  will  ever  be  seen  again  on  those  sunny 
shores.  The  aroma  of  it  all  lingers  there  still."  8 

It  had  been  the  plan  of  the  author  first  to  elicit  strongly  the 
reader's  sympathy  for  Ramona  and  the  Indian  Alessandro,  then 
to  harrow  him  with  the  persecutions  wreaked  upon  them  because 
they  were  Indians.  But  the  purpose  fails  from  the  start.  Ra 
mona 's  Indian  blood  is  not  convincing  to  the  reader.  Until  the 
story  is  well  under  way  no  one  of  the  characters  except  the 
Senora  and  the  priest,  not  even  Ramona  herself,  suspects  that  she 
is  not  a  daughter  of  the  old  Spanish  house  of  Ortegna.  There 
was  small  trace  of  the  Indian  about  her:  her  beauty  was  by  no 
means  Indian — steel  blue  eyes  and  "just  enough  olive  tint  in  her 
complexion  to  underlie  and  enrich  her  skin  without  making  it 
swarthy."  She  had  been  reared  as  a  member  of  the  patriarchal 
household  of  the  Morenos,  and  in  education  and  habit  of  life 
was  as  much  Spanish  as  her  foster  brother  Felipe.  And  Ales 
sandro — even  the  author  explains  that  Ramona  "looked  at  him 
with  no  thought  of  his  being  an  Indian — a  thought  there  had 
surely  been  no  need  of  her  having,  since  his  skin  was  not  a  shade 
darker  than  Felipe's."  He  is  an  Indian,  we  must  admit,  and 
yet  an  Indian  who  looks  like  a  Spaniard,  an  Indian  who  has  been 
educated  carefully  in  the  Mission  like  a  priest,  an  Indian  who 
can  sing  Latin  hymns  with  marvelous  sweetness  and  play  the 
violin  like  a  master,  an  Indian  with  all  the  characteristics  of  a 
courtly  senor,  more  nobly  Spanish  in  soul  than  even  Felipe 
himself,  the  heir  of  the  great  Moreno  estate — the  imagination 
refuses  to  accept  either  of  the  two  characters  as  Indians.  Uncle 

6  Ramona.  Chap.  11. 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  257 

Tom's  Cabin  was  worked  out  with  the  blackest  of  negroes;  its 
central  figure  was  a  typical  slave,  who  died  at  the  end  a  victim 
of  the  system,  but  as  one  reads  Ramona  one  thinks  of  Indians 
only  as  incidental  figures  in  the  background. 

It  is  a  romance  of  the  days  of  the  passing  of  the  haughty 
old  Spanish  regime.  A  maiden  of  inferior  birth,  or,  in  terms  of 
the  ordinary  continental  romance,  a  maiden  whose  mother  was 
of  the  peasant  class,  is  brought  up  side  by  side  and  on  a  perfect 
equality  with  the  heir  of  the  noble  house.  He  falls  in  love  with 
her,  but  he  tells  of  his  love  neither  to  her  nor  to  his  proud  Cas- 
tilian  mother,  who  alone  in  the  family  knows  the  secret  of  the 
girl's  birth.  Then  the  maiden  clandestinely  marries,  out  of  her 
caste  as  all  but  the  Seilora  supposes,  a  peasant,  as  her  mother 
had  been  a  peasant,  and  is  driven  out  of  the  home  with  harsh 
ness.  A  tenderly  reared  maiden,  married  to  poverty,  forced 
to  live  for  a  period  in  squalor,  bereaved  at  last  of  her  husband, 
rescued  by  her  old  lover  when  she  is  at  the  lowest  point  of  her 
misery,  and  taken  back  to  the  old  home  where  the  implacable 
mother  has  died,  and  there  wooed  until  she  surrenders  her  new 
future  to  the  high-born  foster  brother,  who,  even  though  he  has 
learned  of  her  peasant  strain,  has  never  ceased  to  love  her — that 
is  the  romance.  The  Indians,  even  Alessandro,  are  felt  to  be 
only  incidental  parts  of  the  story.  The  center  of  the  romance 
is  the  slow,  faithful,  thwarted,  but  finally  triumphing,  love  of 
Felipe.  The  thing  that  really  grips  is  not  the  incidental  wrongs 
and  sufferings  of  the  Indians,  but  the  relentlessly  drawn  picture 
of  the  old  Seilora  and  the  last  chapter  where  the  two  lovers, 
united  at  last,  have  left  behind  them  the  old  land,  no  longer 
theirs — its  deserted  and  melancholy  Missions,  its  valleys  and 
long  pastures  which  ring  now  with  the  shouts  of  a  conquering 
race,  and  turn  their  faces  southward  into  a  new  world  and  a 
new  and  more  joyous  life.  Then  it  was  that  Ramona  blossomed 
into  her  full  beauty.  "A  loyal  and  loving  heart  indeed  it  was 
— loyal,  loving,  serene.  Few  husbands  so  blest  as  the  Seiior 
Filipe  Moreno.  Sons  and  daughters  came  to  bear  his  name. 
The  daughters  were  all  beautiful ;  but  the  most  beautiful  of  them 
all,  and,  it  was  said,  the  most  beloved  by  both  father  and  mother, 
was  the  eldest  one:  the  one  who  bore  the  mother's  name,  and 
was  only  step-daughter  to  the  Senor — Ramona,  daughter  of  Ales 
sandro  the  Indian."  And  so  the  romance  ends,  as  romance 


258  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

should  end,  with  all  trouble  and  uncertainty  a  mere  cloud  in  the 
far  past. 

Ramon  a  is  a  bombshell  that  all  unknowingly  to  its  creator 
turned  out  to  be  not  a  bombshell  at  all,  but  an  exquisite  work 
of  art.  The  intensity  and  the  passion,  which  came  from  the 
viewing  of  abuses  and  the  desire  to  work  reform,  wove  them 
selves  into  the  very  substance  of  it.  It  is  a  blending  of  realism 
and  romanticism  and  ethic  earnestness  into  a  rounded  romance. 
More  and  more  is  it  evident  that  aside  from  this  and  perhaps 
two  or  three  sonnets,  nothing  else  that  its  author  wrote  is  of 
permanent  value.  Ramona,  however,  is  alone  enough  to  give 
her  a  place  in  American  literature,  a  place  indeed  with  the  two 
or  three  best  writers  of  American  romance. 

Ill 

The  French  occupation  of  the  northern  area  of  the  continent 
has  also  proved  a  rich  literary  field.  It  seems,  as  Howells  has 
observed,  that  the  French  have  touched  America  "with  romance 
wherever  they  have  touched  it  at  all  as  soldiers,  priests,  exiles, 
or  mere  adventurers."  The  bare  history  of  their  adventures  is, 
as  Parkman  has  recorded  it,  romance.  Cooper  caught  a  glimpse 
of  the  richness  of  the  field,  and  a  grand-niece  of  his,  Constance 
Fenimore  Woolson,  made  a  new  discovery  of  it  during  the  * '  local 
color"  period  that  followed  the  advent  of  Bret  Harte.  Her  col 
lection  of  stories,  Castle  Nowhere,  1875,  pictured  with  graphic 
realism  the  life  of  the  rude  settlements  along  the  upper  lakes,  but 
once  or  twice  she  dipped  her  pen  into  pure  romance  and  became 
a  pioneer.  Her  sketch,  *  *  The  Old  Agency, ' '  which  deals  with  the 
ancient  building  at  Mackinac  with  its  memories  of  the  Jesuits, 
and  her  strong  story  "St.  Clair  Flats"  reveal  what  she  might 
have  done  had  she  not  turned  her  attention  to  other  regions. 

The  field  that  she  abandoned  was  taken  later  by  Mary  Hart- 
well  Catherwood,  a  native  of  Ohio,  the  first  woman  novelist  of 
the  period  to  be  born  west  of  the  Alleghenies.  She  was,  more 
over,  the  first  woman  of  any  prominence  in  American  literary 
ranks  to  acquire  a  college  education,  graduating  not  in  the  East, 
as  one  might  suppose,  but  from  a  new  college  in  the  new  West. 
The  fact  is  significant.  .  After  a  brief  period  of  teaching  in  Illi- 
nois,  she  became  a  newspaper  writer  and  a  general  literary 
worker,  and  she  published  her  first  book,  A  Woman  in  Armor, 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  259 

as  early  as  1875.  Juveniles,  marketable  stories,  sketches,  crit 
iques,  flowed  from  her  pen  for  nearly  twenty  years,  and  yet  in 
1888  she  had  settled  upon  no  fixed  style  or  field  of  work  and  she 
was  completely  unknown  to  the  reading  public.  She  seems  to 
have  been  trying  the  literary  currents  of  the  time.  Her  first 
experiment,  not  to  mention  her  juveniles,  was  her  Craque-0'- 
Doom,  1881,  an  E.  P.  Roe-like  novel  of  the  He  Fell  in  Love  with 
His  Wife  type,  but  it  made  no  impression.  ' '  Don 't  you  know, ' ' 
she  makes  one  of  her  characters  say  in  words  that  are  an  ex 
planation,  ''that  the  key  of  the  times  is  not  sentiment  but  prac 
tical  common  sense?  Just  after  the  war  when  the  country  was 
wrought  to  a  high  pitch  of  nerves,  current  literature  overflowed 
with  self-sacrifice.  According  to  that  showing — and  current  lit 
erature  ought  to  be  a  good  reflection  of  the  times — everybody 
was  running  around  trying  to  outdo  his  neighbor  in  the  broken 
heart  and  self-renunciation  business. ' '  Next  she  assayed  to  enter 
the  " practical  sense''  school,  and  her  " Serena,"  Atlantic,  1882, 
with  its  unsparingly  realistic  picture  of  a  death  and  funeral  in 
an  Ohio  farmhouse,  shows  that  she  might  have  made  herself 
the  Miss  Jewett  or  the  Miss  "Wilkins  of  her  native  region.  But 
minute  studies  of  contemporary  life  failed  to  satisfy  the  demands 
within  her.  She  awoke  at  last  to  her  true  vocation  over  a  volume 
of  Parkman,  let  us  suppose  over  the  sixth  and  the  sixteenth 
chapters  of  The  Old  Regime  in  Canada.  From  the  glowing 
pages  of  this  master  of  narrative  she  caught  a  full  breath  of  ro 
mance  and  for  the  first  time  she  realized  her  powers. 

The  Romance  of  Dollard,  which  appeared  in  the  Century  in 
1888,  and  the  other  romances  that  swiftly  followed,  are  no  more 
like  the  earlier  work  of  the  author  than  if  they  had  been  written 
by  another  hand.  It  was  as  if  a  new  and  brilliant  writer  had 
suddenly  appeared.  The  suddenness,  however,  was  only  a  seem 
ing  suddenness:  the  romances  were  in  reality  the  culmination 
of  a  long  and  careful  period  of  apprenticeship.  Her  style,  to  be 
sure,  had  been  influenced  by  Parkman:  one  cannot  read  a  page 
without  feeling  that.  There  is  the  same  incisive,  nervous  man 
ner;  the  same  impetuous  rush  and  vigor  as  if  the  wild  Northern 
winds  were  filling  the  paragraphs;  the  same  short  and  breath 
less  sentences  in  descriptions  of  action,  packed  with  excitement 
and  dramatic  force.  Yet  there  is  vastly  more  than  Parkman  in 
her  work.  There  is  a  wealth  of  poetry  and  spiritual  force  in  it, 


260  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

a  healthy  sentiment,  a  skilful  selecting  and  blending  of  romantic 
elements,  and  a  Hardy-like  power  to  catch  the  spirit  of  a  locality 
so  as  to  make  it  almost  a  personality  in  the  tragedy.  This  back 
ground  of  wilderness,  this  monotone  of  the  savage  North,  is  never 
absent.  At  the  beginning  of  every  story  and  every  chapter  is 
struck,  as  it  were,  the  dominating  key.  Here  is  the  opening 
paragraph  of  "The  Windigo": 

The  cry  of  those  rapids  in  Ste.  Marie's  River  called  the  Sault  could 
be  heard  at  all  hours  through  the  settlement  on  the  rising  shore  and 
into  the  forest  beyond.  Three  quarters  of  a  mile  of  frothing  billows, 
like  some  colossal  instrument,  never  ceased  playing  music  down  ;m  in 
clined  channel  until  the  trance  of  winter  locked  it  up.  At  August  dusk, 
when  all  that  shagpry  world  was  sinking  to  darkness,  the  gushing  mono- 
lone  became  very  distinct. 

These  rapids  with  their  mournful  cry  become  a  character  in  the 
story;  they  dominate  every  page  until  at  the  end  they  rescue 
the  hero,  bearing  in  his  arms  the  frightful  "windigo,"  in  a 
page  of  action  that  stirs  the  blood.  The  Canadian  wilds  of 
the  coureurs  de  bois,  the  roar  of  swollen  rivers,  the  sudden  storms 
that  lash  the  forests,  the  terror  and  the  mystery  of  night  in  the 
savage  woods,  and  evermore  the  river,  the  black  St.  Lawrence — 
one  feels  them  like  a  presence.  Like  Cable,  too,  she  can  make 
her  reader  share  the  superstitious  thrill  of  the  region.  Her 
windigos  and  loup-garous  lay  hold  on  one  like  a  hand  out  of  the 
dark. 

Amid  this  wild  landscape  a  wild  social  order — savage  Indians, 
explorers,  voyagcurs,  flaming  Jesuits,  habitants,  grands  seigneurs, 
soldiers  of  fortune — Frontenac,  Tonty,  Bollard,  La  Salle,  Bigot, 
Montcalm,  and  perhaps  the  lost  dauphin,  son  of  Louis  XVI  and 
Marie  Antoinette — and  in  the  heart  of  it  all  and  the  moving 
force  of  it  all,  beautiful  women,  exiles  from  France,  exquisite 
maidens  educated  in  convents,  charmingly  innocent,  lithe  Indian 
girls,  Indian  queens,  robust  daughters  of  habitants.  Swords 
flash  in  duel  and  battle,  love  rules  utterly  even  such  stormy  souls 
as  La  Salle 's,  plots  with  roots  that  extend  even  across  the  ocean 
into  France  are  worked  out  in  secret  fastness — with  such  ma 
terial  and  such  background  romantic  combinations  are  endless. 

The  strength  of  Mrs.  Catherwood's  work  lies  in  its  tensity 
and  excitement,  its  vigor  of  narrative,  its  picturesque  setting. 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  261 

its  power  of  characterization.  From  this  very  element  of  strength 
comes  a  weakness.  Romance  must  tread  ever  near  the  verge  of 
the  impossible,  and  at  times  she  pushes  her  situations  too  far 
and  falls  over  into  the  realm  of  melodrama.  In  The  White 
Islander,  for  instance,  the  Indians  have  the  hero  burning  at  the 
stake  when  suddenly  Marie,  the  French  "white  islander"  who 
loves  him,  leaps  into  the  circle  of  flames,  declaring  that  she  will 
die  with  him.  Then  realizing  there  is  no  hope  of  saving  the 
two,  the  Jesuit  father  unites  them  in  marriage,  side  by  side  at 
the  stake,  while  the  flames  are  crackling,  but  the  moment  he 
pronounces  them  man  and  wife  the  yells  of  the  rescuing  party 
resound  from  the  near  forest  and  they  are  saved. 

There  is  another  weakness,  one  that  lies  far  deeper,  one  indeed 
that  applies  to  the  whole  school  of  historical  novelists  that  so 
flourished  in  the  nineties.  The  author  had  a  passion  for  '  *  docu 
menting"  her  romances.  She  studied  her  sources  as  carefully  as 
if  she  were  to  write  a  history ;  she  used  all  the  known  facts  that 
could  be  found;  then  she  supplemented  these  known  facts  copi 
ously  from  her  imagination.  For  her  Romance  of  Dollard  she 
got  Parkman  to  write  an  introduction  commending  its  historical 
accuracy ;  she  strewed  the  chapters  with  corroborating  footnotes ; 
and  she  tried  in  all  ways  to  give  the  impression  that  it  was  a 
genuine  piece  of  history.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that  Dollard 
ever  married,  and  there  is  not  a  scrap  even  of  tradition  that  his 
bride  died  with  him  at  the  battle  of  the  Long  Saut.  To  make  an 
historical  personage  like  Dollard  or  La  Salle  or  Tonty  the  lead 
ing,  speaking  character  in  a  romance  is  to  falsify  the  facts.  His 
torical  romance  is  not  history ;  it  is  pure  fiction,  true  only  to  the 
spirit  of  the  age  and  the  place  represented  and  to  the  funda 
mentals  of  human  character  and  the  ways  of  the  human  soul.  It 
should  be  worked  out  always  with  non-historical  characters. 

Of  Mrs.  Catherwood's  romances  the  best  is  The  Lady  of  Fort 
St.  John,  made  so -perhaps  on  account  of  the  unique  character 
Rossignol.  Her  strongest  work,  however,  lies  in  her  shorter 
stories.  It  was  a  peculiarity  of  the  whole  period  that  nearly 
all  of  its  writers  of  fiction  should  have  been  restricted  in  their 
powers  of  creation  to  the  small  effort  rather  than  to  the  large. 
It  was  the  age  of  cameos  rather  than  canvases.  Her  volume, 
The  Chase  of  St.  Castin  and  Other  Stories  of  the  French  in  the 
New  World,  and  her  Mackinac  and  Lake  Stories,  which  deal  with 


262  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

the  mixed  populations  dwelling  on  the  islands  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  show  her  at  her  highest  level.  Her  versatility,  however, 
was  remarkable.  Her  Spirit  of  an  Illinois  Town,  a  realistic 
story  of  a  typical  boom  town,  has  in  it  the  very  soul  of  the  new 
West,  and  her  The  Days  of  Jeanne  d'Arc,  written  after  much 
observation  of  the  Vosges  and  Lorraine  peasants  in  France  and 
a  year  of  work  in  the  best  libraries,  is  as  brilliant  a  piece  of  his 
torical  work  as  was  produced  during  the  period. 

Whatever  her  failings  as  a  romancer  she  must  be  reckoned 
with  always  as  perhaps  the  earliest  American  pioneer  of  that 
later  school  of  historical  fiction  writers  that  so  flourished  in  the 
nineties.  After  her  stirring  tales  had  appeared,  Alice  of  Old 
Vinrcnnes,  and  Monsieur  Beaucaire,  and  The  Scats  of  the 
Mighty,  and  all  the  others,  were  foregone  conclusions. 

IV 

The  latest  field  in  America  for  romance  was  that  created  by 
the  Civil  War.  The  patriarchal  life  of  the  great  Southern 
plantations  had  in  it  a  peculiar  picturesqueness,  especially  when 
viewed  through  the  fading  smoke  of  the  conflict  that  destroyed  it. 
An  old  aristocracy  had  been  overthrown  by  Northern  invaders — 
field  enough  for  romance.  It  had  been  a  peculiar  aristocracy — a 
"democratic  aristocracy,"  as  it  was  fond  of  explaining  itself, 
"not  of  blood  but  of  influence  and  of  influence  exerted  among 
equals, '  ' 6  but  none  the  less  it  was  an  aristocracy  in  the  heart  of 
democratic  America,  Roman  in  its  patrician  pride,  its  jealously 
guarded  principle  of  caste,  its  lavish  wealth,  and  its  slavery 
centered,  social  regime.  Like  all  aristocracies  it  was  small  in 
numbers.  "Only  about  10,781  families  held  as  many  as  fifty 
or  more  slaves  in  1860,  and  these  may,  without  great  error,  be 
taken  as  representing  the  number  of  the  larger  productive  estates 
of  the  South."  7  But  of  these  estates  very  many  were  only  com 
mercial  establishments  with  little  social  significance.  The  real 
aristocracy  was  to  be  found  in  a  few  old  families,  notably  in  Vir 
ginia,  in  numbers  not  exceeding  the  New  England  aristocracy  of 
the  Brahmins,  which  had  been  set  apart  by  a  principle  so 
radically  different.  Both  were  narrowly  provincial  rather  than 
national,  both  were  centered  within  themselves,  both  were  intol- 

*•  Wo(.<lrou-  Wilson,  Division  and  Reunion,  106. 
t  F.  E.  Chadwick,  Causes  of  the  Civil   IV or,  32. 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  263 

erant  and  self-satisfied,  and  both  alike  disappeared  in  the  flames 
of  the  war  to  make  way  for  the  new  national  spirit  which  was  to 
rule  the  new  age. 

To  feel  the  atmosphere  of  this  Southern  old  regime,  this  ex 
clusive  aristocracy,  far  older  than  the  republic,  one  must  read 
Thomas  Nelson  Page's  The  Old  South,  or  his  earliest  published 
sketch,  "Old  Yorktown,"  Scribner's  Monthly,  1881,  a  sketch 
that  is  in  reality  the  preface  to  his  romances.  It  may  be  profit 
able,  perhaps,  to  quote  a  few  paragraphs.  After  his  description 
of  the  old  custom  house  of  York,  the  first  erected  in  America,  he 
writes : 

There  the  young  bucks  in  velvet  and  ruffles  gathered  to  talk  over  the 
news  or  plan  new  plots  of  surprising  a  governor  or  a  lady-love.  It 
was  there  the  haughty  young  aristocrats,  as  they  took  snuff  or  fondled 
their  hounds,  probably  laughed  over  the  story  of  how  that  young  fellow, 
Washington,  who,  because  he  had  acquired  some  little  reputation  fight 
ing  Indians,  had  thought  himself  good  enough  for  anybody,  had  courted 
Mary  Gary,  and  very  properly  had  been  asked  out  of  the  house  of  the 
old  Colonel,  on  the  ground  that  his  daughter  had  been  accustomed  to 
ride  in  her  own  coach.  ...  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  fitter  illus 
tration  of  the  old  colonial  Virginia  life  than  that  which  this  little  town 
affords.  It  was  a  typical  Old  Dominion  borough,  and  was  one  of  the 
eight  boroughs  into  which  Virginia  was  originally  divided.  One  or  two 
families  owned  the  place,  ruling  with  a  sway  despotic  in  fact,  though  in 
the  main  temperate  and  just,  for  the  lower  orders  were  too  dependent 
and  inert  to  dream  of  thwarting  the  "gentlefolk,"  and  the  southerner 
uncrossed  was  ever  the  most  amiable  of  men. 

Among  these  ruling  families  were  the  Nelsons  and  the  Pages : 

The  founder  of  the  Page  family  in  Virginia  was  "Colonel  John 
Page,"  who,  thinking  that  a  principality  in  Utopia  might  prove  better 
than  an  acre  in  Middlesex,  where  he  resided,  came  over  in  1656.  He 
had  an  eye  for  "bottom  land,"  and  left  his  son  Matthew  an  immense 
landed  estate,  which  he  dutifully  increased  by  marrying  Mary  Mann, 
the  rich  heiress  of  Timber  Neck.  Their  son,  Mann,  was  a  lad  thirteen 
years  old  when  his  father  died.  After  being  sent  to  Eton,  he  came 
back  and  took  his  place  at  the  "Council  Board,"  as  his  fathers  did  be 
fore  him  and  as  his  descendants  did  after  him. 

It  reminds  one  of  Hawthorne's  account  of  his  own  family  in  the 
introduction  to  The  Scarlet  Letter. 

Before  the  war  the  South  had  had  its  romancers.  Kennedy 
and  Simms  and  others  had  tried  early  to  do  for  it  what  Cooper 
had  done  for  the  more  northerly  area.  Then  in  the  fifties  John 


264  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Esten  Cooke  (1830-1886),  the  best  novelist  the  South  produced 
during  the  earlier  period,  put  forth  a  series  of  Virginia  romances, 
the  strongest  of  which  undoubtedly  was  The  Virginia  Comedians, 
1854,  republished  in  1883.  The  strength  of  the  book,  as  indeed 
of  all  of  Cooke 's  romances,  lay  in  its  vivacity,  its  enthusiasm,  its 
stirring  pictures  of  the  more  picturesque  elements  of  the  old 
Southern  life:  barbecues,  horse  races,  contests  between  fiddlers, 
the  doings  of  negroes,  and  the  like.  Its  weakness,  in  addition  to 
hasty  workmanship  and  lack  of  cumulative  power,  was  the  com 
mon  weakness  of  all  the  mid-century  fiction.  It  had  a  St.  Elmo 
atmosphere.  Like  all  the  rest  of  his  fiction,  it  is  tainted  with 
profuse  sentimentality,  with  sensationalism,  with  a  straining 
for  the  unexpected  and  the  picturesque.  Panels  in  the  wall  slide 
apart  mysteriously,  accidents  happen  in  the  nick  of  time,  villain* 
in  the  form  of  French  dancing  masters  are  foiled  at  last  by  the 
hero.  One  is  in  old  Williamsburg,  to  be  sure,  "the  Southern 
Boston"  in  its  golden  prime,  and  is  impressed  with  its  courtly 
manners,  its  beautiful  women,  its  chivalrous  heroes,  its  frequent 
duels ;  yet  one  is  never  quite  sure  whether  it  is  the  real  South  or 
whether  it  is  not  after  all  the  story-world  of  an  old-fashioned 
romancer  who  perhaps  has  never  visited  the  South  at  all  save  in 
imagination.  It  is  romanticism  overdone;  it  is  everything  too 
much.  Even  its  sprightliness  and  its  occasional  touches  of  real 
ism  cannot  rescue  it  from  oblivion. 

A  dwelling  upon  the  merely  quaint  and  unusual  in  the  local 
environment  to  arouse  laughter  and  interest  was  perhaps  the  lead 
ing  source  of  failure  in  Southern  fiction  even  to  the  time  of  the 
later  seventies.  From  the  days  of  Longstreet's  Georgia  Scenes, 
pictures  there  had  been  of  the  "cracker,"  the  mountaineer,  the 
Pike,  the  conventional  negro  of  the  Jim  Crow  and  the  Zip  Coon 
or  the  Uncle  Tom  type,  the  colonel  of  the  fire-eating,  whisky- 
drinking  variety,  but  there  had  been  no  painstaking  picture  of 
real  Southern  life  drawn  with  loving  hand,  not  for  mirth  and 
wonder,  not  for  the  pointing  of  a  moral,  but  for  sympathy  and 
comprehension.  Horace  E.  Scudder  as  late  as  1880  noted  that 
"the  South  is  still  a  foreign  land  to  the  North,  and  travelers  are 
likely  to  bring  back  from  it  only  what  does  not  grow  in  the 
North."8  It  was  true  also  of  travelers  in  its  books  as  well,  for 

«  Atlantic  Monthly,  46:828. 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  265 

the  most  of  its  books  had  been  written  for  Northern  publication. 
The  first  writer  really  to  picture  the  South  from  the  heart  out 
ward,  to  show  it  not  as  a  picturesque  spectacle  but  as  a  quivering 

section  of  human  life,  was  Thomas  Nelson  Page  (1853 ), 

whose  first  distinctive  story,  "Marse  Chan/'  appeared  as  late 
as  1884. 

At  the  opening  of  the  Civil  War  Page  was  eight  years  old. 
During  the  years  of  conflict  his  home,  one  of  the  great  planta 
tions  of  Virginia,  was  a  center  of  Confederate  activities,  and 
time  and  again  the  region  about  it  was  overrun  by  the  invading 
armies.  It  was  a  marvelous  training  for  the  future  novelist.  He 
had  been  born  at  precisely  the  right  moment.  He  had  been  a 
part  of  the  old  regime  during  the  early  impressionable  years  that 
are  golden  in  a  life,  the  years  that  color  and  direct  the  imagina 
tion  in  all  its  future  workings,  and  he  was  young  enough  when 
the  era  closed  to  adapt  himself  to  the  new  order.  At  the  close 
of  the  war  he  studied  the  classics  with  his  father,  a  scholar  of 
the  old  Southern  type,  took  the  course  in  the  Virginia  university 
presided  over  by  Robert  E.  Lee,  studied  law  at  the  University 
of  Virginia,  and  then  from  1875  to  1893  practised  law  in  Rich 
mond.  These  are  the  essentials  of  his  biography. 

It  was  while  he  was  establishing  himself  in  his  profession  at 
the  old  capital  of  the  Confederacy  that  he  did  his  first  literary 
work.  Scribner's  Monthly  had  heard  from  the  ruined  South 
the  first  murmurings  of  a  new  literature  and  was  giving  it  every 
encouragement.  It  had  published  King  'a  series  of  articles  on  The 
Great  South,  it  had  discovered  Cable  in  1873,  it  had  encouraged 
Lanier,  and  in  January,  1876,  it  had  begun  to  issue  a  series  of 
negro  dialect  poems  by  Irwin  Russell,  a  native  of  Port  Gibson, 
Mississippi,  poems  that  undoubtedly  had  been  suggested  by  the 
Pike  balladry,  and  yet  were  so  fresh  and  original  in  material  and 
manner  that  they  in  turn  became  a  strong  influence  on  their  times. 
That  the  poems  launched  Page  in  his  literary  career  he  has 
freely  admitted. 

Personally  I  owe  much  to  him.  It  was  the  light  of  his  genius  shining 
through  his  dialect  poems — first  of  dialect  poems  then  and  still  first — 
that  led  my  feet  in  the  direction  I  have  since  tried  to  follow.  Had  he 
but  lived,  we  should  have  had  proof  of  what  might  be  done  with  true 
negro  dialect ;  the  complement  of  "Uncle  Remus."  9 

9  The  Southern  Poets.     Weber,  xxv. 


266  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

In  April,  1877,  came  his  first  contribution  to  Scribner's, 
"Uncle  Gabe's  White  Folks, "  a  dialect  poem  of  the  Russell 
order,  yet  one  that  strikes  the  keynote  of  all  its  author's  later 
work: 

Fine  ole  placet    Yes,  sah, 't  is  so ; 

An'  mighty  fine  people  my  white  folks  war — 
But  you  ought  ter  'a'  seen  it  years  ago, 

When  de  Marster  an'  de  Mistis  lived  up  dyah ; 
When  de  niggers  'd  stan'  all  roun'  de  do', 
Lake  grains  o'  corn  on  de  cornhouse  flo'. 

Together  with  Armistead  C.  Gordon  of  Staunton,  Virginia,  he 
wrote  other  ballads  and  poetical  studies  which  were  issued  as  a 
joint  volume  a  decade  later  with  the  title  Befo'  de  War,  Echoes 
in  Negro  Dialect.  But  in  the  meantime  he  had  been  experi 
menting  with  prose  dialect,  and  late  in  the  seventies  he  submitted 
to  the  magazine  a  long  story  told  wholly  in  the  negro  vernacular. 
It  was  a  bold  venture:  even  Scribner's  hesitated.  They  might 
print  humorous  dialect  poems  and  Ma  con's  "  Aphorisms  from 
the  Quarters"  in  their  "Bric-a-Brae"  department,  but  a  serious 
story  all  of  it  in  a  dialect  that  changed  many  words  almost  be 
yond  recognition — they  held  it  for  over  four  years.  When 
it  did  appear,  however,  as  "Marse  Chan"  in  1884,  it  seemed 
that  their  fears  had  been  groundless.  It  was  everywhere  hailed 
as  a  masterpiece.  ' '  Unc '  Edinburg  's  Drowndin ', "  * '  Meh  Lady, ' ' 
and  others  quickly  followed,  and  in  1887  the  series  was  issued 
as  a  collection  with  the  title  In  Ole  Virginia,  a  book  that  is  to 
Page  what  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  is  to  Harte  and  Old 
Creole  Days  is  to  Cable. 

The  method  of  Page  in  these  early  stories  was  original.  The 
phrase  "befo'  de  war"  explains  it.  He  would  reproduce  the 
atmosphere  of  the  old  South,  or  what  is  more  nearly  the  truth, 
the  atmosphere  of  aristocratic  old  Virginia  plantation  life.  "No 
doubt  the  phrase  'Before  the  war'  is  at  times  somewhat  abused. 
It  is  just  possible  that  there  is  a  certain  Caleb  Balderstonism  in 
the  speech  at  times.  But  for  those  who  knew  the  old  county 
as  it  was  then,  and  contrast  it  with  what  it  has  become  since,  no 
wonder  it  seems  that  even  the  moonlight  was  richer  and  mellower 
'before  the  war'  than  it  is  now.  For  one  thing,  the  moonlight 
as  well  as  the  sunlight  shines  brighter  in  our  youth  than  in  ma- 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  267 

turer  age. ' ' 10  But  Page  expressed  the  phrase  in  negro  dialect — 
"befo'  de  war."  The  story  of  the  vanished  era,  the  gallantry 
and  spirit  of  its  men,  the  beauty  of  its  women,  the  nameless  glow 
that  hovers  over  remembered  youthful  days,  he  would  show 
through  the  medium  of  the  negro.  It  is  exquisite  art  done  with 
seemingly  impossible  materials.  An  old  slave  tells  the  story  in 
his  own  picturesque  way  and  wholly  from  his  own  viewpoint,  yet 
so  simply,  so  inevitably,  that  one  forgets  the  art  and  surrenders 
oneself  as  one  surrenders  to  actual  life  with  its  humor  and  its 
pathos  and  its  tragedy.  It  is  romance — an  idealized  world,  and 
an  idealized  negro.  Surely  no  freed  slave  ever  told  a  consecu 
tive  tale  like  that,  perfect  in  its  proportions  and  faultless  in  its 
lights  and  shadows,  yet  such  a  criticism  never  for  a  moment 
occurs  to  the  reader.  The  illusion  is  complete.  The  old  South 
lives  again  and  we  are  in  it  both  in  sympathy  and  comprehen 
sion. 

In  the  decade  that  followed  this  first  book  Page  gave  himself  to 
the  writing  of  short  stories  and  studies  of  Southern  life,  but 
only  once  or  twice  did  he  catch  again  the  magic  atmosphere  of 
the  earlier  tales.  Two  Little  Confederates  is  exquisite  work,  but 
Elsket,  which  followed,  was  full  of  inferior  elements.  Its  negro 
stories,  ' '  George  Washington 's  Last  Duel ' '  and  t  i  P  laski  's  Tuna- 
ment,"  are  only  good  vaudeville — they  show  but  the  surface  of 
negro  life;  "Run  to  Seed"  is  pitched  almost  with  shrillness,  and 
"Elsket"  and  "A  Soldier  of  the  Empire,"  the  one  dealing  with 
the  last  of  her  race,  the  other  with  the  last  of  his  order,  are 
European  sketches  a  trifle  theatrical  in  spite  of  their  touches 
of  pathos. 

Red  Rock  (1898)  marks  the  beginning  of  Page's  second  period, 
the  period  of  long  romances.  Once  before  with  On  Newfound 
River  he  had  tried  the  border  canvas  and  he  had  failed  save 
in  certain  of  his  characterizations  and  detached  episodes.  Now 
with  Red  Rock  he  set  out  to  write  what  should  stand  among  his 
works  as  The  Grandissimes  stands  among  Cable's.  Its  sub-title, 
A  Chronicle  of  Reconstruction,  explains  at  once  its  strength  and 
its  weakness.  Its  author  approached  it  as  Mrs.  Jackson  had 
approached  Ramona,  with  a  purpose,  and,  unlike  Mrs.  Jackson, 
he  accomplished  his  purpose.  The  wrongs  of  the  South  during 
the  period  are  made  vivid,  but  at  the  expense  of  the  novel. 

10  Preface  to  Red  Rock. 


268  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  opening  pages  are  perfect.  Chapter  two  with  its  merry 
making  at  the  great  plantation,  and  all  its  glimpses  of  traits 
and  scenes  peculiarly  Southern,  leads  the  reader  to  feel  that 
he  has  in  his  hands  at  last  the  great  romance  of  Southern  life. 
There  is  the  background  of  an  ancient  wrong.  The  red  stain 
on  the  great  rock  is  supposed  to  be  the  blood  of  the  first  mistress 
of  the  plantation  murdered  there  by  an  Indian ;  and  the  haunting 
picture  over  the  fireplace  of  the  first  master  who  had  killed  the 
Indian  with  his  bare  hands,  then  had  glared  from  his  portrait 
until  he  had  become  the  dominating  center  of  the  plantation,  is 
felt  to  be  the  dominating  center  also  of  the  romance  as  the  Bras 
Coupe  episode  is  the  motif  of  The  Grandissimes.  But  one  is 
soon  disappointed.  The  problem  dominates  the  romance;  the 
book  is  primarily  a  treatise,  a  bit  of  special  pleading.  It  is  un 
doubtedly  all  true,  but  one  set  out  to  read  a  romance  of  the  old 
South.  True  as  its  facts  may  be,  from  the  art  side  it  is  full  of 
weaknesses.  Leech,  the  carpet-bagger,  and  Still,  the  rascally 
overseer,  are  villains  of  the  melodramatic  type ;  they  are  a  dead 
black  in  character  from  first  to  last.  The  turning  points  of 
the  action  are  accidents,  the  atmosphere  is  too  often  that  of 
St.  Elmo.  "When  the  master  is  killed  in  battle  the  picture  of 
the  Indian  killer  falls  to  the  hearth,  and  again  when  Leech  is 
beating  to  death  the  wounded  heir  to  the  estate  it  falls  upon  the 
assassin  as  if  in  vengeance  and  nearly  crushes  him.  The  plot  is 
chaotic.  We  are  led  to  believe  that  Blair  Gary,  the  doctor's 
daughter,  who  in  the  opening  chapters  is  as  charming  as  even 
Polly  herself  in  In  Ole  Virginia,  is  to  be  the  central  figure,  but 
Blair  is  abandoned  for  no  real  reason  and  Miss  Welsh,  a  North 
ern  girl,  finishes  the  tale.  Jacquelin,  too,  who  dominates  the 
earlier  pages,  peters  out,  and  it  is  not  clear  why  Middleton,  the 
Northern  soldier,  is  brought  in  near  the  close  of  the  book,  per 
haps  to  marry  Blair,  who  by  every  right  of  romance  belongs  to 
Jacquelin.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  story  is  weak  just 
as  Gabriel  Conroy  is  weak,  just  as  The  Grandissimes  and  Pem 
broke  are  weak.  The  materials  are  better  than  the  construc 
tion. 

The  fame  of  Page  then  must  stand  or  fall,  as  Harte's  must,  or 
Cable's  or  Miss  Wilkins's,  on  the  strength  of  his  first  book.  His 
essays  on  the  Old  South  and  other  volumes  are  charming  and 
valuable  studies,  his  novels  are  documents  in  the  history  of  a 


THE  NEW  ROMANCE  269 

stirring  era,  but  his  In  Ole  Virginia  is  a  work  of  art,  one  of  the 
real  classics  of  American  literature. 

Several  others  have  used  Virginia  as  a  background  for  ro 
mance,  notably  Mary  Virginia  Terhune,  (1831 ),  who  wrote 

under  the  pseudonym  "Marion  Harland"  something  like  twenty 
novels,  the  most  of  them  in  the  manner  in  vogue  before  1870,  and 
F.  Hopkinson  Smith  (1838-1915),  whose  Colonel  Carter  of  Car 
ter  sville  (1891)  is  one  of  the  most  sympathetic  studies  of  South 
ern  life  ever  written.  Its  sly  humor,  its  negro  dialect,  its  power 
of  characterization,  its  tender  sentiment,  its  lovable,  whimsical 
central  figure,  and  its  glimpses  of  an  old  South  that  has  forever 
disappeared,  make  it  one  of  the  few  books  of  the  period  concern 
ing  which  one  may  even  now  prophesy  with  confidence. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

GEORGE  W.  CABLE.  Old  Creole  Days,  1879;  The  Grandissimes,  1880; 
Madame  Delphine,  1881;  The  Creoles  of  Louisiana,  1884;  Dr.  Sevier, 
1885;  The  Silent  South,  1885;  Bonaventure,  1888;  Strange  True  Stories 
of  Louisiana,  1889;  The  Negro  Question,  1890;  The  Busy  Man's  Bible, 
1891;  John  March,  Southerner,  1894;  Strong  Hearts,  1899;  The  Cavalier, 
1901;  Byelow  Hill,  1902;  Kincaid's  Battery,  1908;  Gideon's  Band,  1914; 
The  Amateur  Garden,  1914. 

HELEN  HUNT  JACKSON.  Verses,  1870,  1874;  Bits  of  Travel,  1872;  Saxe 
Holm  Stories,  1873;  Bits  of  Talk  About  Home  Matters,  1873;  Bits  of 
Talk  for  Young  People,  1876;  Mercy  Philbrick's  Choice  (No  Name  Series), 
1876;  Hetty's  Strange  History  (No  Name  Series),  1877;  Bits  of  Travel 
at  Home,  1878;  Nelly's  Silver  Mine,  1878;  Saxe  Holm  Stories  (Second 
Series),  1878;  The  Story  of  Boon  (a  Poem),  1879;  A  Century  of  Dis 
honor,  1881;  Mammy  Tittleback  and  Her  Family,  1881;  The  Training  of 
Children,  1882;  The  Hunter  Cats  of  Connorloa,  1884;  Ramona  [First 
Published  in  the  Christian  Union},  1884;  Zeph,  1886;  Glimpses  of  Three 
Coasts,  1886;  Sonnets  and  Lyrics,  1886;  Between  Whiles,  1887. 

MARY  HARTWELL  CATHERWOOD.  A  Woman  in  Armor,  1875;  Craque-0'- 
Doom,  1881;  Rocky  Fork,  1882;  Old  Caravan  Days,  1884;  The  Secrets  of 
Roseladies,  1888;  The  Romance  of  Dollard,  1889;  The  Story  of  Tonty, 
1890;  The  Lady  of  Fort  St.  John,  1891;  Old  Kaskaskia,  The  White 
Islander,  1893;  The  Chase  of  St.  Castin,  1894;  The  Spirit  of  an  Illinois 
Town,  Little  Renault,  The  Days  of  Jeanne  d'Arc,  1897;  Heroes  of  the 
Middle  West,  1898;  Spanish  Peggy,  1899;  The  Queen  of  the  Swamp,  1899; 
Lazarre,  1901. 

JOHN  ESTEN  COOKE.  Leather  Stocking  and  Silk;  or,  Hunter  John 
Myers  and  His  Times,  1854;  The  Virginia  Comedians;  or  Old  Days  in 
the  Old  Dominion,  1854;  The  Youth  of  Jefferson,  1854;  Ellie;  or,  The 
Human  Comedy,  1855;  The  Last  of  the  Foresters,  1856;  Henry  St.  John, 
Gentleman:  a  Tale  of  1814-15,  1859;  A  Life  of  Stonewall  Jackson,  1863; 


270  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Stonewall  Jackson:  a  Military  Biography,  1866;  Surrey  of  Eagle's  Nest, 
1866;  The  Wearing  of  the  (/ray,  1867;  Mohun;  or  the  Last  Days  of  Lee 
«m/  His  Piilailins,  1868;  Fairfax,  the  Maker  of  Oreenway  Court,  1868; 
Jlilt  tn  Hilt,  1869;  Out  of  the  Foam,  1869;  Hammer  and  Rapier,  1870; 
The  Heir  to  Gaymount,  1870;  A  Life  of  General  R.  E.  Lee,  1871;  Dr. 
Vandyke,  1872;  Her  Majesty  the  Queen,  1873;  Pretty  Mrs.  Gaston,  and 
Other  Stories,  1874;  Justin  Hartley,  1874;  Canolles;  the  Fortunes  of  a 
Partisan  of  '81,  1877;  Professor  Presscusee,  Materialist  and  Inventor,  1878; 
Mr.  drantley's  Idea,  1879;  Stories  of  the  Old  Dominion,  1879;  The  Vir 
ginia  Bohemians,  1880;  Virginia,  1885;  The  Maurice  Mystery,  1885;  My 
Lady  Pokahontas,  1885. 

THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE.  In  Ole  Virginia,  1887;  Two  Little  Confed 
erate*,  Befo'  de  War,  1888;  Elsket  and  Other  Stories,  On  Newfound  River, 
The  Old  South,  Among  the  Camps,  1891;  Pastime  Stories,  The  Burial 
of  the  Guns,  1894;  Social  Life  in  Old  Virginia  Before  the  War,  The  Old 
Gentleman  of  the  Black  Stock,  1896;  Two  Prisoners,  1897;  Red  Rock, 
a  Chronicle  of  Reconstruction,  1898;  Santa  Claus's  Partner,  1899;  A 
Captured  Santa  Glaus,  1902;  Gordon  Keith,  1903;  The  Negro:  the  South 
erner's  Problem,  1904;  Bred  in  the  Bone,  1905;  The  Coast  of  Bohemia 
[poems],  1906;  Novels,  Stories,  Sketches,  and  Poems.  Plantation  Edition. 
12  volumes,  1906;  Under  the  Crust,  1907;  The  Old  Dominion — Her  Mak 
ing  and  Her  Manners,  Robert  E.  Lee,  the  Southerner,  Tommy  Trot's  Visit 
to  Santa  Claus,  1908;  John  Marvel,  Assistant,  1909;  Robert  E.  Lee,  Man 
and  Soldier,  1912;  The  Land  of  the  Spirit,  1913. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

LATER   POETS  OF   THE   SOUTH 

The  year  1866  saw  the  low-water  mark,  perhaps,  not  only  of 
the  American  "novel,  but  of  American  literature  generally.  On 
May  12  of  this  year  The  Round  Table  of  New  York,  in  an  edi 
torial  entitled  "Plain  Talk  with  American  "Writers,"  declared 
that  "The  literary  field  was  never  so  barren,  never  so  utterly 
without  hope  of  life.  .  .  .  The  era  of  genius  and  vigor  that 
seemed  ready  to  burst  on  us  only  a  few  months  ago  has  not  been 
fulfilled.  There  is  a  lack  of  boldness  and  power.  Men  do  not 
seem  to  strike  out  in  new  paths  as  bravely  as  of  old."  Then  it 
issued  a  challenge  to  the  new  generation  of  literary  men:  "We 
have  very  little  strong,  original  writing.  Who  will  awaken  us 
from  this  sleep?  Who  will  first  show  us  the  first  signs  of  a 
genuine  literary  reviving  ?  ...  If  ever  there  was  a  time  when  a 
magnificent  field  opened  for  young  aspirants  for  literary  renown, 
that  time  is  the  present.  Every  door  is  wide  open." 

We  know  now  that  the  reviving  was  close  at  hand.  Within  five 
years  the  flood-gates  were  opened,  and  Clemens,  Harte,  Hay, 
Burroughs,  Howells,  Miller,  and  all  the  group  were  publishing 
their  first  work.  Among  others  a  young  Georgia  school-teacher 
felt  the  thrill  as  he  read  the  Round  Table  call,  and  he  made  haste 
to  send  to  the  paper  a  budget  of  poems — "Barnacles,"  "Laugh 
ter  in  the  Senate,"  and  some  others,  to  be,  if  possible,  the  first 
fruits  of  this  new  period.  A  year  later,  in  1867,  he  went  himself 
to  New  York  to  bring  out  a  novel,  Tiger  Lilies,  a  book  sent  forth 
with  eagerness  and  infinite  hope,  for  was  not  every  door  wide 
open  ?  It  is  a  book  to  linger  over :  crude  as  it  is,  it  was  the  first 
real  voice  from  the  new  South. 


The  little  group  of  Southern  poets  that  had  gathered  itself 
about  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne   (1831-1886),  the  chief  of  whom 

271 


272  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

were  Margaret  Junkin  Preston  (1820-1897),  Francis  Orrery 
Ticknor  (1822-1874),  and  Henry  Timrod  (1829-1867)— poets 
who  were  contemporary  with  Bayard  Taylor  and  his  group — be 
longs  rather  with  the  period  before  the  war  than  with  the  new 
national  period  that  followed  it.  They  were  poets  of  beauty  like 
Stoddard,  singing  the  music  of  Keats  and  Tennyson  and  the  old 
Cavalier  poets — dreamers,  makers  of  dainty  conceits  and  pretty 
similes,  full  of  grace  and  often  of  real  melody,  but  with  little 
originality  either  of  manner  or  message.  The  war  came  into  their 
lives  sharply  and  suddenly,  a  cataclysm  that  shook  all  their  plans 
into  ruins  about  them.  It  swept  away  their  property,  their 
homes,  their  libraries,  even  their  health.  For  a  time  during  the 
conflict  they  turned  their  poetry  into  martial  channels:  invec 
tives  on  the  invading  "Huns,"  rallying  songs,  battle  lyrics, 
patriotic  calls.  When  the  war  was  over  they  found  themselves 
powerless  to  adjust  themselves.  Hayne  before  the  war  was  a 
graceful  sonneteer,  a  worshiper  of  classic  beauty,  a  writer  of 
odes,  not  to  the  nightingale  but  to  the  mocking  bird : 

A  golden  pallor  of  voluptuous  light 

Filled  the  warm  southern  night: 

The  moon,  clear  orbed,  above  the  sylvan  scene 

Moved  like  a  stately  queen, 

So  rife  with  conscious  beauty  all  the  while, 

What  could  she  do  but  smile 

At  her  own  perfect  loveliness  below, 

Glassed  in  the  tranquil  flow 

Of  crystal  fountains  and  unruffled  streams? 

Even  his  war  poems  are  gentle  and  softly  poetic.  After  the  war 
he  lapsed  into  lyrics  of  retrospect  and  contemplation  with  a 
minor  note  always  of  gentle  resignation.  He  lived  to  write 
elegies  on  Timrod  and  Lanier  and  to  make  himself  the  threnodist 
of  the  old  South  : 

Forgotten !  Tho*  a  thousand  years  should  pass, 
Methinks  our  air  will  throb  with  memory's  thrills, 

A  common  grief  weigh  down  the  faltering  grass, 
A  pathos  shroud  the  hills; 

Waves  roll  lamenting;  autumn  sunsets  yearn 

For  the  old  time's  return. 

A  more  sensitively  imaginative  poet  was  Timrod,  yet  even  he 
was  not  strong  enough  to  lead  his  time  and  become  more  than 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       273 

a  minor  singer.  He  was  of  the  old  South  and  would  have  been 
wholly  out  of  place  in  the  new  even  had  he  lived.  More  fire  and 
Hebraic  rage  there  were  in  him  than  in  Hayne,  indeed  than  in 
any  other  American  poet  save  Whittier.  Once  or  twice  when  his 
life  was  shaken  to  the  center  by  the  brutalities  of  war  he  burst 
into  cries  that  still  quiver  with  passion : 

Oh!  standing  on  this  desecrated  mold, 

Methinks  that  I  behold, 

Lifting  her  bloody  daisies  up  to  God, 

Spring  kneeling  on  the  sod, 

And  calling  with  the  voice  of  all  her  rills, 

Upon  the  ancient  hills 

To  fall  and  crush  the  tyrants  and  the  slaves 

That  turn  her  meads  to  graves. 

And  again  at  the  climax  of  "The  Cotton  Boll": 

Oh,  help  us,  Lord !  to  roll  the  crimson  flood 
Back  on  its  course,  and,  while  our  banners  wing 
Northward,  strike  with  us !  till  the  Goth  shall  cling 
To  his  own  blasted  altar-stones,  and  crave 
Mercy;  and  we  shall  grant  it,  and  dictate 
The  lenient  future  of  his  fate 

There,  where  some  rotting  ships  and  crumbling  quays 
Shall  one  day  mark  the  port  which  ruled  the  Western 
seas. 

And  what  other  poet  save  Whittier  could  after  victory  burst  into 
Hebraic  ecstasy  of  joy  like  this? 

Our  foes  are  fallen!     Flash,  ye  wires! 

The  mighty  tidings  far  and  nigh ! 

Ye  cities!  write  them  on  the  sky 
In  purple  and  in  emerald  fires! 

They  came  with  many  a  haughty  boast ; 

Their  threats  were  heard  on  every  breeze; 

They  darkened  half  the  neighboring  seas; 
And  swooped  like  vultures  on  the  coast. 

False  recreants  in  all  knightly  strife, 
Their  way  was  wet  with  woman's  tears; 
Behind  them  flamed  the  toil  of  years, 

And  bloodshed  stained  the  sheaves  of  life. 

They  fought  as  tyrants  fight,  or  slaves ; 

God  gave  the  dastards  to  our  hands ; 

Their  bones  are  bleaching  on  the  sands, 
Or  moldering  slow  in  shallow  graves. 


274  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

But  it  was  like  pouring  molten  bullet  lead  from  Satsuma  vase. 
The  fragile,  beautiful  life  that  should  have  known  nothing  harsher 
than  the  music  of  poets  and  the  laughter  of  children  and  lovers, 
broke  under  the  strain  of  war  and  poverty  and  neglect,  and  his 
life  went  out  miserably  at  thirty-eight. 

II 

Sidney  Lanier's  life  was  as  brief  as  Timrod 's  and  as  full  of 
harshness  and  poverty,  but  the  end  of  the  war  found  him  young 
enough  to  have  resiliency  and  the  ability  to  adapt  himself  to  the 
new  regime  of  which  willy-nilly  he  found  himself  a  part.  He 
was  thirteen  years  younger  than  Timrod  and  twelve  years  younger 
than  Hayne.  His  temperament  was  different :  he  was  broader  in 
his  sympathies — no  man  ever  threw  himself  more  completely  into 
the  cause  of  the  Confederacy,  yet  a  decade  after  the  war  we  find 
him  with  a  nation-wide  vision  of  the  new  era ;  he  was  more  demo 
cratic  of  soul  than  Hayne  or  Timrod — he  could  worship  beauty 
as  passionately  as  they  and  he  could  also  write  ballads  of  the 
Pike  County  order;  he  suffered  just  as  acutely  from  the  war  as 
did  Timrod,  yet  one  may  search  long  through  his  poems  or  his 
letters  for  a  single  despondent  note.  He  was  buoyant  and  im 
petuous  :  his  winning  of  literary  recognition  in  the  face  of  phys 
ical  disabilities  seemingly  insuperable  places  him  beside  Parkman. 

In  point  of  time  Lanier  was  the  first  of  what  may  be  called 
the  Georgia  school  of  writers.  It  is  notable  that  the  State  most 
harshly  dealt  with  by  the  war  was  the  first  to  arise  from  its  ruins, 
the  first  to  receive  the  vision  of  a  new  South,  and  the  first  to 
catch  the  new  national  spirit.  Macon,  Lanier's  birthplace,  had 
about  it  all  the  best  elements  of  the  Old  South.  It  was  the  seat 
of  an  influential  college  for  women,  it  possessed  a  cultured  society, 
and  it  had  an  art  atmosphere — music,  poetry,  literary  conversa 
tion — unusual  in  that  period  outside  of  New  England  and  some 
of  the  larger  cities.  Lanier's  home  was  in  every  way  ideal:  his 
father,  a  lawyer  of  the  old  Southern  type,  was  "a  man  of  con 
siderable  literary  acquirements  and  exquisite  taste, "  and,  more 
over,  like  most  Southerners  of  his  class,  he  had  a  library  stocked 
with  the  older  classics,  a  treasure-house  of  which  his  son,  bookish 
from  his  earliest  childhood,  made  the  fullest  use.  "Sir  Walter 
Scott,  the  romances  of  Froissart,  the  adventures  of  Gil  Bias," 
all  the  older  poets — he  read  them  until  he  seemed  to  his  boyish 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       275 

companions  as  one  who  lived  apart  in  a  different  world  from 
theirs. 

His  formal  schooling  was  meager,  yet  at  fifteen  he  was  able  to 
enter  the  sophomore  class  of  Oglethorpe  University,  a  small  de 
nominational  college  at  Midway,  Georgia,  and  in  1860  he  was 
ready  for  graduation  with  the  highest  honors  of  his  class.  Com 
pared  with  the  larger  Northern  institutions,  the  college  was  piti 
fully  primitive;  Lanier  in  later  years  could  even  call  it  "far 
cical,"  nevertheless  it  is  doubtful  if  any  university  could  have 
done  more  for  the  young  poet.  It  brought  him  in  contact  with 
a  man,  James  Woodrow  of  the  department  of  science,  a  man  who 
was  to  become  later  the  president  of  the  University  of  South  Caro 
lina  and  the  author  of  the  famous  book,  An  Examination  of  Cer 
tain  Recent  Assaults  on  Physical  Science  (1873). 

"Such  a  man,"  says  his  biographer,  "coming  into  the  life  of  Lanier 
at  a  formative  period,  influenced  him  profoundly.  He  set  his  mind 
going  in  the  direction  which  he  afterwards  followed  with  great  zest, 
the  value  of  science  in  modern  life  and  its  relation  to  poetry  and  re 
ligion.  He  also  revealed  to  him  the  meaning  of  genuine  scholarship."  x 

This  influence  it  may  have  been  which  made  Lanier  in  later  years 
so  tolerant  and  so  broad  of  view.  The  attraction  between  pupil 
and  teacher  seems  to  have  been  mutual.  Through  Woodrow  it 
was  that  Lanier  received  his  appointment  as  tutor  in  the  college, 
a  position  which  he  held  during  the  year  that  followed. 

It  was  a  year  of  close  study  and  of  wide  reading.  Throughout 
his  undergraduate  period  he  had  read  enormously:  often  in  un 
usual  books:  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  Jeremy  Taylor, 
Keats 's  Endymion,  Chatterton,  Christopher  North,  Tennyson, 
whose  Maud  he  learned  by  heart,  Carlyle,  and  a  long  list  of  others. 
'  *  Without  a  doubt  it  was  Carlyle  who  first  enkindled  in  Lanier  a 
love  of  German  literature  and  a  desire  to  know  more  of  that 
language."  He  studied  with  eagerness.  His  dream  now  was  to 
enter  a  German  university  and  do  scholarly  work  as  Basil  Gilder- 
sleeve  had  just  done,  and  Thomas  R.  Price,  two  other  young  men 
of  the  new  South,  but  suddenly  as  he  dreamed  all  his  life  plans 
fell  in  ruins  about  him.  The  crash  of  war  resounded  in  his  ears. 
All  in  a  moment  he  found  himself  in  an  atmosphere  of  fierce 
excitement.  The  college  became  an  armed  camp ;  Macon  became 

i  Sidney  Lanier,  Mims,  29. 


276  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

a  military  center.  Before  he  had  fairly  realized  it  the  young 
tutor,  just  turned  twenty,  had  enlisted  in  the  first  company  to 
leave  the  State,  and  was  marching  away  to  the  front. 

1 1  is  career  as  a  soldier  need  not  detain  us.  It  was  varied  and 
it  was  four  years  long  and  it  ended  dramatically  on  the  stormy 
night  of  November  2,  1864,  when  the  Federal  cruiser  Santiago- 
de-Cuba  picked  up  the  blockade  runner  Lucy  off  Wilmington, 
North  Carolina,  and  sent  her  crew,  among  them  signal  officer 
Lanier,  to  Point  Lookout  prison.  A  fellow  prisoner  and  a  close 
friend  during  the  hard  days  that  followed  was  another  Southern 
poet,  John  Bannister  Tabb  (1845-1909),  whose  brief  lyrics  as  we 
know  them  to-day  possess  beauty  and  finish  and  often  distinction. 

Lanier  was  released  in  March,  1865,  and  after  incredible  hard 
ships  succeeded  in  reaching  his  home  in  Macon  more  dead  than 
alive  to  find  his  mother  dying  of  consumption.  The  poet 's  tend 
ency  to  the  disease  was  congenital ;  the  prison  hardships  and  ex 
posure  had  broken  down  his  physical  vigor;  and  two  years  later 
while  teaching  a  small  country  school  in  Prattville,  Alabama,  as 
he  was  forced  to  do  by  the  poverty  of  the  South  and  his  own  lack 
of  money  or  profession,  hemorrhages  from  the  lungs  began,  and 
the  rest  of  his  life,  like  Stevenson's  under  the  same  conditions, 
was  a  fight  with  tuberculosis,  a  perpetual  changing  from  place 
to  place  that  he  might  find  some  climate  that  would  afford  re 
lief.  With  unparalleled  heroism  he  fought  off  the  disease  for 
fifteen  years,  and  under  physical  weakness  that  would  have  sent 
the  average  man  to  his  bed  and  his  grave  he  made  himself 
recognized  as  the  leading  poetic  voice  of  the  new  South,  and  one 
of  the  few  poetic  voices  of  his  era. 

His  life  divides  itself  into  three  periods :  the  first  one  his  time 
of  dreaming,  as  he  himself  styled  it — his  boyhood,  ending  with 
the  call  to  arms  in  1861 ;  the  second  his  period  of  storm  and  stress, 
his  period  of  struggle  and  uncertainty  and  final  adjustment,  end 
ing  in  1873  with  his  determination  to  devote  his  life  to  music  and 
poetry ;  and  finally  the  seven  or  eight  years  in  which  eagerly  and 
unremittingly,  with  failing  health  and  long  periods  of  total  in 
capacity,  he  wrote  all  those  books  and  poems  for  which  he  is  now 
known. 

Ill 

Lanier 's  work  more  than  that  of  any  other  writer  of  his  time 
illustrates  the  difference  between  the  mid-century  literature  and 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       277 

that  of  the  later  national  period.  He  is  distinctively  a  transition 
figure :  he  heard  both  voices  and  he  obeyed  both.  Until  after  the 
war  he  was  what  Hayne  and  Timrod  had  been,  and  Taylor  and 
Stoddard — a  disciple  of  Keats,  a  poet  of  merely  sensuous  beauty. 
But  for  the  war  he  would  have  been  a  Longfellow  bringing  from 
Germany  Hyperions  and  Voices  of  the  Night.  The  four  vital 
years  in  the  camps,  on  the  blockade  runner,  in  the  military  prison, 
with  their  close  contact  with  life  in  its  elemental  conditions,  was 
a  university  course  far  different  from  any  that  he  had  dreamed 
of  in  his  college  days.  It  was  this  that  differentiates  him  from 
Hayne  and  Timrod  and  that  brings  him  into  our  period. 

Tiger  Lilies,  his  first  published  book  (1867),  is  a  document  not 
only  in  the  life  of  Lanier  but  also  in  the  transition  period  of  the 
sixties.  It  is  a  crude  first  novel  full  of  a  strange  mixture  of  weak 
ness  and  strength.  It  has  been  likened  to  Longfellow 's  Hyperion, 
but  the  likeness  extends  no  further  than  this :  Tiger  Lilies  is  the 
novel  transitional  to  the  seventies  as  Hyperion  was  transitional 
to  the  romantic  thirties  and  forties.  In  parts  it  belongs  completely 
to  the  older  period.  It  opens  with  this  outburst,  not  by  Paul 
Fleming,  but  by  Paul  Riibetsah.1 : 

"Himmel !  Cospetto !  Cielo !  May  our  nests  be  built  on  the  strong 
est  and  leanest  bough  of  the  great  tree  Ygdrasil!  May  they  be  lined 
with  love,  soft  and  warm,  and  may  the  storms  be  kind  to  them :  Amen 
and  Amen ! "  said  Paul  Riibetsahl. 

The  first  part  is  florid  in  the  extreme  and  artificial,  full  of  lit 
erary  affectations  and  conceits: 

On  the  last  day  of  September,  1860,  huntsman  Dawn  leapt  out  of 
the  East,  quickly  ran  to  earth  that  old  fox,  Night,  and  sat  down  on  the 
top  of  Smoky  Mountain  to  draw  breath,  etc. 

Its  discussions  of  poetry,  of  music,  of  the  meaning  of  art  and  of 
life  generally  are  all  in  the  dream-world  of  German  romance,  and 
its  chaotic  plot  and  its  impossible  characters  and  happenings  are 
in  full  keeping.  But  with  part  two  the  book  comes  suddenly  to 
life.  The  hero  enters  the  war  and  all  at  once  there  is  realism, 
passages  like  this  as  graphic  even  as  Whitman : 

The  wounded  increase.  Here  is  a  musket  in  the  road:  there  is  the 
languid  hand  that  dropped  it,  pressing  its  fingers  over  a  blue  edged 
wound  in  the  breast.  Weary  pressure,  and  vain — the  blood  flows 
steadily. 


278  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

More  muskets,  cartridge-boxes,  belts,  greasy  haversacks,  strew  the 
ground. 

Here  come  the  stretcher-bearers.  They  leave  a  dripping  line  of 
blood.  "Walk  easy  as  you  kin,  boys,"  comes  from  the  blanket  which 
the  men  are  carrying  by  the  corners.  Easy  walking  is  desirable  when 
each  step  of  your  four  carriers  spurts  out  the  blood  afresh  or  grates 
the  rough  edges  of  a  shot  bone  in  your  leg. 

The  sound  of  a  thousand  voices,  eager,  hoarse,  fierce,  all  speak  i  ML: 
together  yet  differently,  conies  thn>ui:Ii  the  leaves  of  the  undergrowth. 
A  strange  multitudinous  noise  accompanies  it — a  noise  like  the  tre 
mendous  sibilation  of  a  mile-long  wave  just  before  it  breaks.  It  is  the 
shuffling  of  two  thousand  feet  as  they  march  over  dead  leaves. 

The  novel  is  laid  in  the  Tennessee  Mountains  in  the  same  region 
that  was  to  figure  a  decade  later  in  the  stories  of  Charles  Egbert 
Craddock.  The  Great  Smoky  Mountains  and  Chilhowee  Moun 
tain — familiar  names  now — form  the  background,  but  the  author 
puts  no  individuality  into  the  landscape.  It  might  be  Germany. 
His  mountaineers,  however,  are  alive  and  they  are  sharply  char 
acterized.  Gonn  Smallin  and  his  brother  Cain  are  among  the 
earliest  figures  in  that  vast  gallery  of  realistically  portrayed  local 
types  that  soon  was  to  figure  so  prominently  in  American  litera 
ture.  The  chapter  that  records  the  desertion  of  Gorm  and  his 
arraignment  by  his  brother  Cain  is  worthy  of  standing  with  the 
best  work  of  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  or  Octave  Thanet.  The 
prison  scenes,  drawn  from  the  author 's  own  first-hand  experience, 
are  documents  in  the  history  of  the  war.  On  every  line  is  the 
stamp  of  reality.  Here  is  a  bivouac  scene : 

Cain  Smallin  sat,  stiff  backed  upon  the  ground,  sternly  regarding 
his  packed  circle  of  biscuits  in  the  skillet. 

"How  do  they  come  on,  Cainf     Most  done?"  .  .  . 

"Bully !     Brownin'  a  little  some  of  'em.     'Bout  ten  minutes  yit." 

At  that  moment  a  shell  that  has  buried  itself  in  the  ground  ex 
plodes  in  the  midst  of  the  group,  literally  burying  the  party  and 
scattering  havoc.  Cain  Smallin,  unhurt,  digs  himself  from  the 
ruins  and  scrapes  the  dirt  from  his  face. 

"Boys,"  said  he,  in  a  broken  voice  of  indignant  but  mournful  in 
quiry,  "have  any  of  ye  seed  the  skillet  f" 

In  the  words  of  its  preface,  the  book  was  a  cry,  "a  faint  cry, 
sent  from  a  region  where  there  are  few  artists,  to  happier  lands 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       279 

who  own  many ;  calling  on  these  last  for  more  sunshine  and  less 
night  in  their  art.  .  .  .  There  are  those  even  here  in  the  South 
who  still  love  beautiful  things  with  sincere  passion." 

But  necessity  was  upon  the  young  dreamer.  He  was  without 
a  profession,  and  he  had  married  a  wife.  There  was  no  refuge 
but  his  father 's  profession,  which  always  had  been  the  last  as  well 
as  the  first  resort  of  young  Southerners.  His  father's  law  firm 
was  glad  to  employ  him,  though  it  could  offer  but  meager  com 
pensation.  No  more  novels,  no  more  dreams  of  the  scholar's  life, 
of  Heidelberg,  and  poetry.  Until  1873  he  was  busy,  like  Cable 
during  the  same  period,  with  his  conveyances  and  his  bills  of  sale. 
The  ambitious  plan  of  a  long  poem  of  medieval  France,  "The 
Jacquerie/'  he  kept  in  his  desk,  a  beautiful  dream  that  often 
he  returned  to.  He  wrote  exquisite  little  songs  for  it : 

May  the  maiden, 

Violet-laden 
Out  of  the  violet  gea, 

Comes  and  hovers 

Over  lovers, 
Over  thee,  Marie,  and  me, 

Over  me  and  thee. 

His  poetic  experiments  of  this  period  one  may  find  at  the  back 
of  the  definitive  edition  of  his  work.  With  Timrod  and  Hayne  he 
was  still  dreamy  and  imaginative,  more  prone  to  look  at  the  beau 
tiful  than  at  the  harsher  realities  of  humanity,  yet  even  as  he 
was  dreaming  over  his  "Jacquerie"  he  was  not  oblivious  to  the 
problems  of  his  own  time.  He  wrote  dialect  poems:  "Jones's 
Private  Argument,"  "Thar  's  More  in  the  Man  than  Thar  Is  in 
the  Land, "  "  Nine  from  Eight, ' '  and  the  like,  and  published  them 
in  Southern  papers.  They  deal  with  the  Georgia  ' '  Crackers ' '  and 
with  the  social  and  financial  conditions  of  the  times,  and  they  were 
written  in  1868,  two  years  before  the  Pike  County  balladry.  In 
1875  with  his  brother  Clifford  he  published  in  Scribner's  Monthly 
* '  The  Power  of  Prayer ;  or,  the  First  Steamboat  up  the  Alabama, ' ' 
a  negro  dialect  poem  adapted  undoubtedly  from  a  similar  episode 
recounted  in  Mark  Twain's  The  Gilded  Age,  yet  original  in  tone 
and  realistically  true.  Had  it  been  unsigned  we  should  attribute 
it  without  hesitation  to  Irwin  Russell,  who  by  many  is  believed  to 
have  been  the  first  to  discover  the  literary  possibilities  of  the 


280  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

negro,  at  least  in  the  field  of  poetic  balladry.  How  like  Russell 
is  a  stanza  like  this: 

It  'pear  to  me  dis  mornin'  I  kin  smell  de  fust  o'  June. 

I  'clar*,  I  b'lieve  dat  mockin'-bird  could  play  de  fiddle  soon! 

Dem  yonder  town-bells  sounds  like  dey  was  ringin'  in  de  moon. 

But  Russell's  first  poem,  "Uncle  Cap  Interviewed, "  appeared  in 
Scribner's  almost  a  year  later.  The  Lanier  brothers  contributed 
to  the  magazine  at  least  one  more  dialect  poem,  "Uncle  Jim's 
Baptist  Revival  Hymn,"  a  product  as  realistically  true  to  the 
negro  as  anything  written  later  by  Harris  or  Page : 

Sin's  rooster's  crowed,  Ole  Mahster's  riz, 

De  sleepin'-time  is  pas'; 
Wake  up  dem  lazy  Baptissis, 
Chorus.       Dey  's  mightily  in  de  grass,  grass, 
Dey  's  mightily  in  de  grass. 

De  Meth'dis  team's  done  hitched;  0  fool, 

De  day's  a-breakin'  fas'; 
Gear  up  dat  lean  old  Baptis'  mule, 

Dey  's  mightily  in  de  grass,  grass, 

Dey  's  mightily  in  de  grass.     Etc. 

Lanier  was  a  pioneer  in  a  rich  field. 

IV 

The  turning  point  came  in  1873.  The  poet's  physical  condition 
had  become  so  alarming  that  he  had  been  sent  to  spend  the  winter 
at  San  Antonio,  Texas.  He  found  what  least  he  was  looking  for. 
The  German  Maennerchor  of  the  city,  an  unusual  circle  of  musi 
cians,  discovered  him  and  asked  him  to  play  to  them  the  flute, 
an  instrument  that  had  been  his  companion  since  boyhood.  '  *  To 
my  utter  astonishment, ' '  he  wrote  his  wife,  ' '  I  was  master  of  the 
instrument.  Is  not  this  most  strange?  Thou  knowest  I  had 
never  learned  it;  and  thou  rememberest  what  a  poor  muddle  I 
made  at  Marietta  in  playing  difficult  passages;  and  I  certainly 
have  not  practised ;  and  yet  there  I  commanded  and  the  blessed 
notes  obeyed  me,  and  when  I  had  finished,  amid  a  storm  of  ap 
plause,  Herr  Thielepape  arose  and  ran  to  me  and  grasped  my 
hand,  and  declared  that  he  hat  never  heert  de  flivie  accompany 
itself  pef  ore."2 

2  Mima's  Sidney  Lanier,  122. 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       281 

Judging  from  contemporary  testimony,  we  are  compelled  to 
rate  Lanier  as  a  musical  genius.  Though  he  never  had  had 
formal  training  in  the  art,  from  his  childhood  music  had  been 
with  him  a  consuming  passion.  He  had  taken  his  flute  to  the 
war,  he  had  smuggled  it  into  the  prison,  and  he  had  moved  all  his 
life  amid  a  chorus  of  exclamations  over  the  magic  beauty  of  his 
improvisations.  The  masters  were  praising  him  now:  he  would 
be  a  master  himself.  He  would  toil  no  longer  at  the  task  he 
despised;  he  would  live  now  for  art.  In  November,  1873,  he 
wrote  to  his  father : 

How  can  I  settle  myself  down  to  be  a  third-rate  struggling  lawyer 
for  the  balance  of  my  little  life,  as  long  as  there  is  a  certainty  almost 
absolute  that  I  can  do  something  so  much  better?  Several  persons, 
from  whose  judgment  in  such  matters  there  can  be  no  appeal,  have 
told  me,  for  instance,  that  I  am  the  greatest  flute-player  in  the  world; 
and  several  others,  of  equally  authoritative  judgment,  have  given  me 
an  almost  equal  encouragement  to  work  with  my  pen.  My  dear  father, 
think  how,  for  twenty  years,  through  poverty,  through  pain,  through 
weariness,  through  sickness,  through  the  uncongenial  atmosphere  of  a 
farcical  college  and  of  a  bare  army  and  then  of  an  exacting  business 
life,  through  all  the  discouragement  of  being  wholly  unacquainted  with 
literary  people  and  literary  ways — I  say,  think  how,  in  spite  of  all 
these  depressing  circumstances,  and  of  a  thousand  more  which  I  could 
enumerate,  these  two  figures  of  music  and  poetry  have  steadily  kept  in 
my  heart  so  that  I  could  not  banish  them.  Does  it  not  seem  to  you 
as  to  me,  that  I  begin  to  have  the  right  to  enroll  myself  among  the 
devotees  of  these  two  sublime  arts,  after  having-  followed  them  so  long 
and  so  humbly,  and  through  so  much  bitterness?  3 

He  gave  himself  first  to  music.  So  perfect  was  his  mastery 
of  his  instrument  that  he  secured  without  difficulty  the  position 
of  first  flute  in  Hamerik's  Peabody  Orchestra  of  Baltimore,  and 
he  played  at  times  even  with  Thomas's  Orchestra  of  New  York. 
It  was  the  opinion  of  Hamerik,  himself  a  rare  artist,  that  Lanier 
was  a  musician  of  highest  distinction : 

His  human  nature  was  like  an  enchanted  instrument,  a  magic  flute, 
or  the  lyre  of  Apollo,  needing  but  a  breath  or  a  touch  to  send  its  beauty 
out  into  the  world.  ...  In  his  hands  the  flute  no  longer  remained  a 
mere  material  instrument,  but  was  transformed  into  a  voice  that  set 
heavenly  harmonies  into  vibration.  Its  tones  developed  colors,  warmth, 
and  a  low  sweetness  of  unspeakable  poetry — His  playing  appealed 
alike  to  the  musically  learned  and  to  the  unlearned — for  he  would 
magnetize  the  listener;  but  the  artist  felt  in  his  performance  the  supe- 

8  Quoted  bv  William  Hayes  Ward,  1884,  edition  of  the  Poems. 


282  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

riority  of  the  momentary  inspiration  to  all  the  rules  and  shifts  of  mere 
technical  scholarship.  His  art  was  not  only  the  art  of  art,  but  an  art- 
above  art.  I  will  never  forget  the  impression  he  made  on  me  when  he 
played  the  flute  concerta  of  Emil  Hartman  at  a  Peabody  symphony 
concert,  in  1878 — his  tall,  handsome,  manly  presence,  his  flute  breathing 
noble  sorrows,  noble  joys,  the  orchestra  softly  responding.  The  audi 
ence  was  spellbound.  Such  distinction,  such  refinement!  He  stood 
the  master,  the  genius.4 

His  first  recognition  as  a  poet  came  in  1875  with  the  publication 
of  "Corn"  in  Lippincott's  Magazine.  The  poem  caught  the 
attention  of  Taylor  and  brought  to  the  poet  the  commission  to  fur 
nish  the  words  for  the  Cantata  to  be  sung  at  the  Centennial  Ex 
position.  After  that  commission  Lanier  was  a  national  figure. 

During  the  scant  six  years  that  followed,  the  years  of  his  lit 
erary  life  in  which  he  wrote  all  that  is  distinctive  in  his  poetry, 
he  lived  in  a  whirlwind  of  activity,  of  study  in  the  large  libraries 
to  which  he  now  had  access,  of  music,  of  literary  hack-work,  or  he 
lay  totally  incapacitated  by  sickness  that  threatened  always  the 
speedy  termination  of  all.  Poetry  he  could  write  only  in  moments 
stolen  from  more  imperative  things.  He  compiled  a  guide  book 
to  Florida,  he  prepared  courses  of  lectures  on  Shakespeare  for 
clubs  of  women,  he  delivered  two  scholarly  courses  of  lectures  at 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  and  he  published  four  juveniles  that 
adapted  for  boys  the  old  romances  of  chivalry.  He  wrote  lyrics 
and  songs,  but  his  future  as  a  poet  must  rest  on  five  poems: 
"Corn,"  the  first  significant  poem  from  the  new  South;  "The 
Symphony,"  a  latter-day  ode  to  St.  Cecilia;  "The  Psalm  of  the 
West,"  which  he  intended  should  do  for  the  centennial  year  what 
Taylor  had  failed  so  lamentably  to  do  in  his  Fourth  of  July  ode ; 
"The  Marshes  of  Glynn,"  a  symphony  without  musical  score; 
and,  finally  on  his  death  bed,  held  in  life  only  by  his  imperious 
will,  "Sunrise,"  his  most  joyous  and  most  inspired  improvisation 
of  all. 

V 

For  Lanier  was  essentially  an  improvisatore.  He  left  behind 
him  no  really  finished  work :  he  is  a  poet  of  magnificent  fragments. 
He  was  too  excited,  too  impetuous,  to  finish  anything.  Poetry 
was  a  thing  of  rhapsodic  outbursts,  of  tiptoe  glimpses :  his  eager 
jottings  for  poems  made  on  the  backs  of  envelopes,  scraps  of 

4  Quoted  by  William  Hayes  Ward,  1884.  edition  of  the  Poems. 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       283 

paper,  anything  that  was  at  hand,  fill  a  volume.  He  may  be 
likened  to  a  child  in  a  meadow  of  daisies :  he  filled  his  hands,  his 
arms,  full  of  the  marvelous  things,  then  threw  them  aside  to 
gather  more  and  ever  more.  There  was  no  time  to  arrange  them, 
no  time  even  to  look  at  them  twice.  Ideas  came  in  flocks ;  he  lived 
in  a  tumult  of  emotion.  His  letters  quiver  with  excitement  as  do 
those  of  no  other  American  poet.  "All  day  my  soul  hath  been 
cutting  swiftly  into  the  great  space  of  the  subtle,  unspeakable 
deep,  driven  by  wind  after  wind  of  heavenly  melody."  "I  can 
not  tell  you  with  what  eagerness  I  devoured  Felix  Holt."  "My 
heart  was  all  a-cry."  "The  fury  of  creation  is  on  me  to-day." 
' '  Lying  in  the  music-waters,  I  floated  and  flowed,  my  soul  utterly 
bent  and  prostrate. "  "  The  very  inner  spirit  and  essence  of  all 
wind-songs,  bird-songs,  passion-songs,  folk-songs,  country-songs, 
sex-songs,  soul-songs,  and  body-songs  hath  blown  me  in  quick 
gusts  like  the  breath  of  passion  and  sailed  me  into  a  sea  of  vast 
dreams. '  '  One  may  quote  interminably. 

Hamerik's  characterization  of  his  flute-playing  may  be  taken 
as  the  key  to  all  his  work:  "The  artist  felt  in  his  performance 
the  superiority  of  the  momentary  inspiration  to  all  the  rules  and 
shifts  of  mere  technical  scholarship."  It  explains  the  uneven- 
ness  of  his  work  and  its  lack  of  finish.  He  had  no  patience  to 
return  to  a  poem  and  labor  upon  it.  Other  and  more  rapturous 
melodies  were  calling  to  him.  It  explains  his  lack  of  construc 
tive  power:  inspiration  is  a  thing  of  rapturous  glimpses,  not  of 
long,  patient  coordinating  effort.  His  poems  are  chaotic  in  struc 
ture  even  to  the  point  often  of  obscurity.  ' '  Corn, ' '  for  example, 
was  intended  to  be  a  poem  with  a  message,  and  that  message 
doubtless  the  superiority  of  corn  over  cotton  as  a  crop  for  the 
new  South.  But  half  the  poem  has  only  the  vaguest  connection 
with  the  subject.  One-third  of  it  outlines  the  duties  and  privi 
leges  of  the  poet  soul.  The  message  is  not  brought  home :  one  has 
to  labor  to  find  it.  There  is  a  succession  of  beautiful  images  ex 
pressed  often  with  rare  melody  and  distinction,  but  inconsecutive 
even  to  vagueness. 

His  prose  has  the  same  characteristics.  The  lectures  on  the 
English  novel  seem  like  the  first  draft  of  work  rather  than  like 
a  finished  product.  He  changes  his  plan  as  he  proceeds.  It  was 
to  be  a  study  of  the  novel  as  a  literary  form,  but  as  he  progresses 
he  changes  it  into  a  study  of  the  development  of  personality  in 


12*4  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

literature,  and  finally  ends  it  by  devoting  half  his  total  space  to 
a  rhapsody  upon  George  Eliot.  The  Science  of  English  Verse  has 
the  same  faults.  He  rides  a  pet  theory  through  chapters  and 
dismisses  really  basic  principles  with  a  paragraph.  It  is  a  book 
of  magnificent,  even  at  times  of  inspired  sections,  but  as  a  com 
plete  treatise  it  has  no  great  value.  The  same  may  be  said  of 
all  his  prose  work :  he  had  flashes  of  inspiration  but  no  consecutive 
message.  The  cause  for  it  was  partly  pathological,  partly  tem 
peramental.  He  was  first  of  all  a  musician,  a  genius,  an  im- 
provisatore. 

That  his  conception  of  the  poet's  office  was  a  broader  and  saner 
and  more  modern  one  than  that  of  most  of  his  contemporaries  was 
undoubtedly  true.  In  "Corn"  he  addresses  thus  the  stalk  that 
stands  high  above  its  fellows : 

Still  shalt  thou  type  the  poet-soul  sublime 

That  leads  the  vanward  of  his  timid  time 

And  sings  up  cowards  with  commanding  rime — 

Soul  calm,  like  thee,  yet  fain,  like  thee,  to  grow 

By  double  increment,  above,  below; 

Soul  homely,  as  thou  art,  yet  rich  in  grace  like  thee, 

Teaching  the  yeomen  selfless  chivalry. 

The  poet  then  is  not  to  be  a  mere  dreamer  of  beauty,  a  dweller 
in  the  clouds  apart  from  the  men  of  his  time.  He  is  to  stand 
squarely  on  the  earth : 

Thou  lift'st  more  stature  than  a  mortal  man's, 
Yet  ever  piercest  downward  in  the  mold 

And  keepest  hold 
Upon  the  reverend  and  steadfast  earth 

That  gave  thee  birth. 

But  despite  his  conception  of  the  poet's  office,  Lanier  himself 
is  not  often  a  leader  and  a  prophet.  He  had  ceased  to  be  Georgia- 
minded  and  he  had  felt  the  national  thrill  that  was  making  a  new 
America,  but  it  was  not  his  to  be  the  strong  voice  of  the  new  era. 
"The  Psalm  of  the  West,"  which  casts  into  poetic  form  certain 
vital  episodes  of  American  history,  has  no  message.  One  searches 
it  in  vain  for  any  interpretation  of  the  soul  of  the  great  republic, 
or  any  forecasting  of  the  future  years,  or  any  passages  expressing 
what  America  is  to  stand  for  among  the  nations.  It  is  a  frag 
ment,  the  introduction  to  what  should  have  been  the  poem. 

In  ' '  The  Symphony ' '  more  than  elsewhere,  perhaps,  he  is  the 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       285 

poet  of  his  period.  The  poem  is  a  cry  against  the  materialism 
that  Lanier  felt  was  crushing  the  higher  things  out  of  American 
life: 

"0  Trade !     0,  Trade !    Would  thou  wert  dead ! 
The  Time  needs  heart — 't  is  tired  of  head : 
We  're  all  for  love/'  the  violins  said. 

Each  instrument  in  the  orchestra  joins  in  the  argument.  "A 
velvet  flute  note"  followed  the  passion  of  the  violins,  the  reeds 
whispered,  "the  bold  straightforward  horn"  spoke  out, 

And  then  the   hautboy   played   and   smiled 
And  sang  like  any  large-eyed  child. 

The  solution  of  the  problem  was  the  same  that  Shelley  had 
brought.  Love  alone  could  master  the  evils  of  the  time : 

Life!  Life!  thou  sea-fugue,  writ  from  east  to  west, 
Love,  love  alone  can  pore 
On  thy  dissolving  score 
Of  harsh  half-phrasings, 

Blotted  ere  writ, 
And  double  erasings 

Of  chords  most  fit. 

And  love  was  to  come  through  music : 

Music  is  love  in  search  of  a  word. 

The  poem  is  indeed  a  symphony.  One  feels  that  the  poet  is  com 
posing  rather  than  writing,  that  he  is  thinking  in  terms  of  or 
chestration,  balancing  parts  and  instruments,  and  working  out 
tone  values.  The  same  is  true  of  "The  Marshes  of  Glynn"  and 
' ;  Sunrise ' ' :  they  are  symphonies. 

One  must  appreciate  fully  this  musical  basis  of  Lanier 's  art  if 
one  is  to  understand  him.  He  thought  in  musical  forms.  The 
best  illustration,  perhaps,  may  be  found  in  his  Centennial  Can 
tata.  To  the  average  man  the  poem  meant  little.  One  must  read 
it  and  reread  it  and  study  it  if  one  is  to  get  any  consecutive 
thought  from  it.  But  read  after  Lanier 's  explanation,  it  be 
comes  not  only  clear  but  illuminating : 

The  principal  matter  over  which  the  United  States  can  legitimately 
exult  is  its  present  existence  as  a  Republic,  in  spite  of  so  much  oppo 
sition  from  Nature  and  from  man.  I  therefore  made  the  refrain  of 
the  song — about  which  all  its  train  of  thought  moves — concern  itself 
wholly  with  the  Fact  of  existence:  the  waves  cry  "It  shall  not  be";  the 


286  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

powers  of  nature  cry  "It  shall  not  be";  the  wars,  etc.,  utter  the  same 
cry.  This  Refrain  is  the  key  to  the  whole  poem. 

A  knowledge  of  the  inability  of  music  to  represent  any  shades  of 
meaning  save  those  which  are  very  intense,  and  very  highly  and  sharply 
contrasted,  led  me  to  divide  the  poem  into  the  eight  paragraphs  or 
movements  which  it  presents,  and  make  these  vividly  opposed  to  each 
other  in  sentiment.  Thus  the  first  movement  is  reflection,  measured 
and  sober:  this  suddenly  changes  into  the  agitato  of  the  second:  this 
agitato,  culminating  in  the  unison  shout  "No!  It  shall  not  be,"  yields 
in  the  third  movement  to  the  pianissimo  and  meager  effect  of  the 
skeleton  voices  from  Jamestown,  etc.:  this  pianissimo  in  the  fourth 
movement  is  turned  into  a  climax  of  the  wars  of  armies  and  of  faiths, 
again  ending  in  the  shout,  "No !"  etc. :  the  fifth  movement  opposes  this 
with  a  whispered  chorus — Huguenots  whispering  Yea,  etc. :  the  sixth 
opposes  again  with  loud  exultation,  "Now  praise,"  etc.:  the  seventh 
opposes  this  with  the  single  voice  singing  the  Angels'  song;  and  the 
last  concludes  the  series  of  contrasts  with  a  broad  full  chorus  of  meas 
ured  and  firm  sentiment. 

The  metrical  forms  were  selected  purely  with  reference  to  their  de 
scriptive  nature:  the  four  trochaic  feet  of  the  opening  strophe  measure 
off  reflection,  the  next  (Mayflower)  strophe  swings  and  yaws  like  a 
ship,  the  next  I  made  outre  and  bizarre  and  bony  simply  by  the  device 
of  interposing  the  line  of  two  and  a  half  trochees  amongst  the  four 
trochee  lines:  the  swift  action  of  the  Huguenot  strophe  of  course  re 
quired  dactyls:  and  having  thus  kept  the  first  part  of  the  poem  (which 
describes  the  time  before  we  were  a  real  nation)  in  meters  which  are 
as  it  were  exotic  to  our  tongue,  I  now  fall  into  the  iambic  meter — 
which  is  the  genius  of  English  words — as  soon  as  the  Nation  becomes 
secure  and  firm. 

My  business  as  member  of  the  orchestra  for  three  years  having 
caused  me  to  sit  immediately  in  front  of  the  bassoons,  I  had  often  been 
struck  with  the  possibility  of  producing  the  ghostly  effects  of  that  part 
of  the  bassoon  register  so  well  known  to  students  of  Berlioz  and  Meyer 
beer — by  the  use  of  the  syllable  ee  sung  by  a  chorus.  With  this  view 
I  filled  the  ghostly  Jamestown  stanza  with  ee's  and  would  have  put 
in  more  if  I  could  have  found  them  appropriate  to  the  sense.5 

No  one  can  read  this  without  thinking  of  Poe's  "Philosophy  of 
Composition. ' '  It  explains  much  of  Lanier  's  work. 

VI 

Had  Lanier  lived  a  decade  longer,  had  he  had  time  and  strength 
to  devote  himself  completely  to  his  poetry,  had  his  impetuous  soul 
had  time  to  gain  patience  and  poise,  and  divest  itself  of  florid  ex 
travagance  and  vague  dithyramb,  he  might  have  gained  a  much 
higher  place  as  a  poet.  He  was  gaining  in  power :  his  last  poem 

»  Letters  of  Sidney  Lanier,  162. 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       287 

is  his  greatest.  He  was  laying  plans  that  would,  we  feel  sure, 
have  worked  themselves  out  to  high  poetic  achievement.  For  at 
least  four  books  of  poetry  he  had  already  selected  titles :  Hymns 
of  the  Mountains,  Hymns  of  the  Marshes,  Songs  of  Aldheim,  and 
Poems  on  Agriculture.  What  they  were  to  be  we  can  judge  only 
from  ' '  The  Marshes  of  Glynn  "  and  ' '  Sunrise. ' ' 

In  these  two  poems  we  have  work  that  is  timeless  and  essentially 
placeless.  There  is  a  breadth  and  sweep  about  it  that  one  finds 
only  in  the  greater  poets : 

And  invisible  wings,  fast  fleeting,  fast  fleeting, 

Are  beating 

The  dark  overhead  as  my  heart  beats — and  steady  and  free 
Is  the  ebb-tide  flowing  from  marsh  to  sea. 

Oh,  what  is  abroad  in  the  marsh  and  the  terminal  sea? 

Somehow  my  soul  seems  suddenly  free 

From  the  weighing  of  fate  and  the  sad  discussions  of  sin, 

By  the  length  and  the  breadth  and  the  sweep  of  the  marshes  of  Glynn, 

As  the  marsh-hen  secretly  builds  on  the  watery  sod, 

Behold  I  will  build  me  a  nest  on  the  greatness  of  God: 

I  will  fly  in  the  greatness  of  God  as  the  marsh-hen  flies 

In  the  freedom  that  fills  all  the  space  'twixt  the  marsh  and  the  skies: 

By  so  many  roots  as  the  marsh-grass  sends  in  the  sod 

I  will  heartily  lay  me  a-hold  on  the  greatness  of  God: 

Oh,  like  the  greatness  of  God  is  the  greatness  within 

The  range  of  the  marshes,  the  liberal  marshes  of  Glynn. 

The  jottings  that  he  made  in  his  notebooks  and  the  fragments  of 
poems  that  he  noted  down  as  the  inspiration  came  to  him  remind 
us  often  of  Whitman.  They  have  sweep  and  range : 

I  fled  in  tears  from  the  men's  ungodly  quarrel  about  God:  I  fled 
in  tears  to  the  woods,  and  laid  me  down  on  the  earth;  then  somewhat 
like  the  beating  of  many  hearts  came  up  to  me  out  of  the  ground,  and 
I  looked  and  my  cheek  lay  close  by  a  violet ;  then  my  heart  took  courage 
and  I  said: 

"I  know  that  thou  art  the  word  of  God,  dear  violet. 
And,  oh,  the  ladder  is  not  long  that  to  my  heaven  leads! 
Measure  the  space  a  violet  stands  above  the  ground, 
'T  is  no  farther  climbing  that  my  soul  and  angels  have  to  do 
than  that!" 

I  went  to  the  church  to  find  my  Lord. 
They  said  He  is  here.     He  lives  here. 
But  I  could  not  see  him 
For  the  creed-tables  and  bonnet  flowers. 


288  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Lanier  is  essentially  a  poet  of  unfulfilled  promise.  He  seems 
always  about  to  do  greater  things  than  in  reality  he  ever  does. 
His  lyrics  like  "Evening  Song,"  and  "The  Trees  and  the 
Master"  and  "The  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee, "  have  strains  in 
them  almost  Shelley-like,  but  there  is  always  the  fatal  defect  some 
where.  Nothing  is  perfect.  It  seems  strange  sometimes  that  one 
who  could  at  moments  go  so  far  could  not  go  the  whole  way  and 
remain  long.  He  must  hold  his  place  among  the  American  poets 
by  virtue  of  a  few  fragments.  A  few  times  was  he  rapt  into  the 
pure  ether  of  poetry,  but  he  was  allowed  to  catch  only  fleeting 
glimpses. 

VII 

The  period  may  be  said  to  have  produced  in  the  South  two  in 
spired  poets,  Lanier  and  Irwin  Russell,  and  in  many  ways  the  two 
were  alike.  Both  were  frail  of  body  and  sensitive  of  tempera 
ment,  both  were  passionately  given  to  music  and  found  their 
poetic  field  by  means  of  it,  both  were  educated  men,  eager  students 
of  the  older  literatures,  both  discovered  the  negro  as  poetic  ma 
terial,  and  both  died  when  their  work  was  just  beginning,  Russell, 
like  Keats,  at  the  boyish  age  of  twenty-six.  But  Russell  added 
what  Lanier  had  no  trace  of,  a  waywardness  of  character  and  a 
genius  for  goodfellowship  that  wrecked  him  even  earlier  than  it 
did  Burns. 

The  life  of  Russell  is  associated  with  four  cities :  Port  Gibson, 
Mississippi,  where  he  was  born  in  1853 ;  St.  Louis,  where  he  spent 
the  earlier  years  of  his  life  and  where  later  he  completed  the 
course  at  the  Jesuit  University;  Port  Gibson  again,  where  he 
studied  law  and  was  admitted  to  the  bar;  New  York  City,  of 
which  he  was  a  resident  from  January  until  July,  1879 ;  and  New 
Orleans,  where  he  died  in  December  of  the  same  year.  His  life 
was  fitful  and  restless.  He  did  little  with  his  profession,  turning 
from  it  to  learn  the  printer 's  trade,  and  then  after  a  few  listless 
months,  drifting  into  other  things.  He  had  dreams  of  California 
and  wandered  on  foot  in  its  direction  as  far  as  Texas;  he  at 
tempted  to  run  away  to  sea,  and  he  spent  much  time  on  the  river 
boats  making  jovial  friends  of  the  captains  and  the  pilots.  His 
banjo  assured  him  of  a  welcome  wherever  he  might  go. 

The  writing  of  poetry  was  never  to  him  a  serious  occupation. 
He  composed  with  abandon  when  the  mood  was  on  him,  he  seldom 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       289 

revised,  and  he  cared  little  for  the  finished  product  save  as  it 
might  please  his  friends.  One  finds  many  evidences  in  his  work 
that  he  learned  his  art  from  Burns,  whom  he  considered  the  great 
est  poet  the  world  had  ever  produced.  He  had  saturated  himself 
too  with  the  English  balladists  and  the  genuine  old  poets  of  the 
early  periods.  The  poetry  of  his  own  time  angered  him.  In  ' '  The 
Hysteriad"  (Scribner's,  16:759)  he  satirizes  with  bitterness  the 
contemporary  product.  "A  poem  of  the  period,"  he  said,  "or  a 
periodical  poem,  is  a  thing  that  is  altogether  emotional,  and  is 
not  intended  to  convey  any  idea  in  particular. ' '  To  him  poetry 
meant  something  not  esoteric  and  idealized,  but  something  that  lay 
very  close  to  the  life  of  every  day,  something  redolent  of  hu 
manity,  like  Burns 's  songs.  He  maintained  that  his  own  inspira 
tion  had  come  not  at  all  from  other  poets,  but  from  actual  contact 
with  the  material  that  he  made  use  of.  His  own  words  concerning 
the  composition  of  his  first  poem  have  a  peculiar  value.  They  are 
a  part  of  the  history  of  the  period : 

You  know  I  am  something  of  a  ban  joist.  Well,  one  evening  I  was 
sitting  in  our  back  yard  in  old  Mississippi  "twanging"  on  the  banjo, 
when  I  heard  the  missis — our  colored  domestic,  an  old  darkey  of  the 
Aunt  Dinah  pattern — singing  one  of  the  outlandish  camp-meeting 
hymns  of  which  the  race  is  so  fond.  She  was  an  extremely  "  'ligious" 
character  and,  although  seized  with  the  impulse  to  do  so,  I  hesitated 
to  take  up  the  tune  and  finish  it.  I  did  so,  however,  in  the  dialect  I 
have  adopted,  and  which  I  then  thought  and  still  think  is  in  strict  con 
formity  to  their  use  of  it,  I  proceeded,  as  one  inspired,  to  compose 
verse  after  verse  of  the  most  absurd,  extravagant,  and,  to  her,  irreverent 
rime  ever  before  invented,  all  the  while  accompanying  it  on  the  banjo 
and  imitating  the  fashion  of  the  plantation  negro.  ...  I  was  then 
about  sixteen  and  as  I  had  soon  after  a  like  inclination  to  versify,  was 
myself  pleased  with  the  performance,  and  it  was  accepted  by  a  pub 
lisher,  I  have  continued  to  work  the  vein  indefinitely.6 

To  what  extent  the  poet  was  indebted  to  the  Pike  balladry  that 
had  preceded  his  first  work,  at  least  so  far  as  wide  publication  in 
Northern  magazines  was  concerned,  is  not  easily  determined.  It 
seems  extremely  probable  that  he  had  seen  it.  Lanier,  as  has 
been  shown,  had  published  negro  dialect  poetry  in  Scribner's 
nearly  a  year  before  Russell,  but  whoever  was  pioneer,  the  author 
of  "Christmas-night  in  the  Quarters"  was  the  one  who  first 
caught  the  attention  of  the  reading  public  and  exerted  the  great- 

e  The  Critic,  November  3,  1888. 


290  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

est  influence  upon  the  period.  He  undoubtedly  was  the  leading 
pioneer.  Page  and  Gordon  dedicated  their  Bcfo'  de  War  "To 
Irwin  Russell,  who  awoke  the  first  echo,"  and  Joel  Chandler 
Harris,  manifestly  an  authority,  declared  that  ''Irwin  Russell 
was  among  the  first — if  not  the  very  first — of  Southern  writers  to 
appreciate  the  literary  possibilities  of  the  negro  character,  and 
of  the  unique  relations  existing  between  the  two  races  before  the 
war,  and  was  among  the  first  to  develop  them/' 7 

In  the  last  year  of  his  life  Russell,  encouraged  by  the  reception 
of  his  magazine  poems,  went  to  New  York  to  make  literature  his 
profession.  Bunner,  the  editor  of  Puck,  and  Gilder  and  Robert 
Underwood  Johnson  of  the  Century  staff,  and  others,  recognized 
his  ability,  and  gave  him  every  encouragement  possible.  One  of 
the  most  prominent  of  the  poets  of  the  older  school,  it  may  be 
remarked,  also  became  interested  in  him  and  urged  him  to  drop 
the  ephemeral  type  of  verse  to  which  he  had  addicted  himself  and 
devote  his  talents  to  really  serious  work.  For  a  brief  period  he 
obeyed,  with  what  success  one  may  judge  from  the  poems  at  the 
end  of  his  volume. 

Success  came  too  late.  His  friends  were  powerless  to  control 
his  wayward  genius.  His  frail  constitution  gave  way.  From  a 
bed  of  fever  he  arose  still  half  delirious,  staggered  to  the  docks, 
engaged  to  work  his  way  on  a  New  Orleans  boat  as  a  coal-heaver, 
and  in  New  Orleans  secured  a  position  on  the  Times.  But  the 
end  was  near.  To  a  member  of  the  Times  staff  he  opened  his 
heart  in  words  that  might  have  come  from  Poe : 

It  has  been  the  romance  of  a  weak  young  man  threaded  in  with  the 
pure  love  of  a  mother,  a  beautiful  girl  who  hoped  to  be  my  wife,  and 
friends  who  believed  in  my  future.  I  have  watched  them  lose  heart, 
lose  faith,  and  again  and  again  I  have  been  so  stung  and  startled  that 
I  have  resolved  to  save  myself  in  spite  of  myself.  ...  I  never  shall.8 

He  died  a  few  weeks  later. 

VIII 

The  value  of  Russell's  work  depends  not  so  much  upon  the 
poetic  quality  of  it  as  upon  the  faithfulness  and  the  skill  with 
which  he  has  portrayed  the  negro.  Within  this  narrow  field  he 
has  had  no  superior.  Harris  has  summed  it  up  thus : 

1 1ntroduction  to  Russell's  Poems. 

8  Library  of  Southern  Literature,  4663. 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       291 

The  most  wonderful  thing  about  the  dialect  poetry  of  Irwin  Russell 
is  his  accurate  conception  of  the  negro  character.  The  dialect  is  not 
always  the  best — it  is  often  carelessly  written — but  the  negro  is  there, 
the  old-fashioned,  unadulterated  negro,  who  is  still  dear  to  the  Southern 
heart.  There  is  no  straining  after  effect — indeed  the  poems  produce 
their  result  by  indirection;  but  I  do  not  know  where  could  be  found 
to-day  a  happier  or  a  more  perfect  representation  of  negro  character.9 

Russell  is  less  romantic  in  his  picture  of  the  negro  than  are 
Page  and  Harris.  Once  in  a  while  he  throws  the  mellow  light 
over  the  old  days,  as  in  "Mahsr  John,"  where  he  represents  the 
freed  slave  dwelling  in  imagination  upon  the  glories  that  he  has 
once  known,  but  he  holds  the  strain  not  long : 

I  only  has  to  shet  my  eyes,  an'  den  it  seems  to  me 
I  sees  him  right  afore  me  now,  jes'  like  he  use'  to  be, 
A-settin'  on  de  gal'ry,  lookin'  awful  big  an'  wise, 
Wid  little  niggers  f  annin'  him  to  keep  away  de  flies. 

He  alluz  wore  de  berry  bes'  ob  planters'  linen  suits, 

An'  kep'  a  nigger  busy  jes'  a-blackin'  ob  his  boots; 

De  buckles  on  his  galluses  wuz  made  of  solid  gol', 

An'  diamon's ! — dey  wuz  in  his  shut  as  thick  as  it  would  hoP. 

Page  would  have  stopped  after  the  old  negro  had  ended  his  glori 
fication  of  the  old  days,  but  Russell  hastens  to  bring  the  picture  to 
present-day  conditions : 

Well,  times  is  changed.     De  war  it  come  an'  sot  de  niggers  free, 
An'  now  ol'  Mahsr  John  ain't  hardly  wuf  as  much  as  me ; 
He  had  to  pay  his  debts,  an'  so  his  Ian'  is  mos'ly  gone — 
An'  I  declar5  I 's  sorry  fur  my  pore  ol'  Mahsr  John. 

It  was  essentially  the  later  negro,  the  negro  of  the  poet 's  own  day, 
that  is  represented  in  the  poems.  He  has  become  a  farmer  for 
himself  now  and  tries  sly  tricks  when  he  takes  his  cotton  to 
market.  Detected,  he  is  voluble  in  his  explanations: 

Rocks  in  dat  ar  cotton !     How  de  debbil  kin  dat  be  ? 
I  packed  dat  bale  mys'f — hoi'  on  a  minute,  le' — me — see — 
My  stars !  I  mus'  be  crazy  !     Mahsr  Johnny,  dis  is  fine ! 
I 's  gone  an'  hauled  my  brudder's  cotton  in,  stead  ob  mine ! 

He  sends  his  boy  to  work  as  waiter  on  the  river  boats  and  as  he 
is  departing  overwhelms  him  with  advice : 

Dem  niggers  what  runs  on  de  ribber  is  mos'ly  a  mighty  sharp  set; 
Dey'd  fin'  out  some  way  fur  to  beat  you,  ef  you  bet  'em  de  water 
wuz  wet ; 

9  Introduction  to  Russell's  Poems. 


292  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

You's  got  to  watch  out  for  dem  fellers;  dey'd  cheat  off  de  horns  ob 

a  cow. 
I  knows  'em;  I  follered  de  ribber  'fore  ebber  I  follered  a  plow. 

He  is  inordinately  fond  of  preaching,  as  witness  "  Half-way 
Doin's"  and  "A  Sermon  for  the  Sisters. "  He  delights  to  inter 
pret  the  Scriptures,  and  his  exegesis  is  often  full  of  local  color : 

"Bar's  gwine  to  be  a*  oberflow,"  said  Noah,  lookin'  solemn — 

Fur  Noah  tuk  the  Herald,  an'  he  read  de  ribber  column — 

An'  so  he  sot  his  hands  to  wuk  a-cl'arin'  timber-patches, 

An'  'lowed  he 's  gwine  to  build  a  boat  to  beat  the  steamah  Natchez. 

All  the  characteristics  of  the  negro  are  touched  upon  with  the 
certainty  of  perfect  knowledge:  his  superstitions,  his  ignorance 
of  the  world,  his  awe  of  legal  terms,  his  humor,  his  simple  trust 
in  his  religion,  his  childlike  attitude  toward  nature,  his  habit  of 
addressing  sententious  language  to  his  beasts  of  burden  as  if  they 
understood  all  he  said,  his  conceit,  and  his  firm  belief  in  im 
mortality. 

Russell  was  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  new  era  which  had  as  its 
most  marked  characteristic  the  use  of  American  themes  and  back 
grounds  and  absolute  truth  to  American  life.  No  section  of  the 
social  era  was  too  lowly  or  unknown  for  him  to  take  as  material 
for  his  art.  He  could  even  plan  to  write  a  negro  novel  with  all 
of  its  characters  negroes  and  write  the  first  chapters.  Little, 
however,  that  he  planned  ever  came  to  completion.  The  thin 
volume  of  poems  published  after  his  death  was  but  a  fragment  of 
what  he  might  have  written  under  happier  conditions.  As  it  is, 
he  must,  like  Lanier,  be  treated  as  one  of  those  brief  excited  lives 
that  are  found  ever  at  the  opening  of  new  romantic  eras — Novalis, 
Chatterton,  Burns,  Keats — poets  who  left  behind  only  fragments 
of  what  might  have  been,  but  who  influenced  enormously  the 
writers  that  were  to  be. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PAUL  HAMILTON  HAYNE.  (1830-1886.)  Poems,  Boston,  1855;  Sonnets 
and  Other  Poems,  1857;  Avolio:  A  Legend  of  the  Island  of  Cos,  1860; 
Legends  and  Lyrics,  Philadelphia,  1872;  The  Mountain  of  the  Lovers, 
with  Poems  of  Nature  and  Tradition,  1875;  Life  of  Robert  Young  Hayne, 
1878;  Life  of  Hugh  Swinton  Legare,  1878;  Complete  edition  of  the  Poems 
with  a  sketch  by  Margaret  J.  Preston,  1882. 

HKNBY  TIMBOD.     (1829-1867.)     Poems,  Boston,  1860;   Complete  edition 


LATER  POETS  OF  THE  SOUTH       293 

of  the  Poems  with  biographical  introduction  of  60  pages  by  Paul  Hamil 
ton  Hayne,  1872;  Poems  of  Henry  Timrod,  1901. 

SIDNEY  LANIEE.  (1842-1881.)  Tiger  Lilies:  a  Novel,  1867;  Florida: 
Its  Scenery,  Climate,  and  History,  1876;  Poems,  1877;  The  Boy's  Frois- 
sart.  Being  Sir  John  Froissart's  Chronicles  of  Adventure,  Battle,  and 
Custom  in  England,  France,  Spain,  etc.  Edited  for  Boys,  1878;  The 
Science  of  English  Verse,  1880;  The  Boy's  King  Arthur.  Being  Sir  Thomas 
Malory's  History  of  King  Arthur  and  His  Knights  of  the  Round  Table. 
Edited  for  Boys,  1880;  The  Boy's  MaMnogion.  Being  the  Earliest  Welsh 
Tales  of  King  Arthur  in  the  Famous  Red  Book  of  Hergest.  Edited  for 
Boys,  1881;  The  Boy's  Percy.  Being  Old  Ballads  of  War,  Adventure,  and 
Love,  from  Bishop,  Thomas  Percy's  Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry. 
Edited  for  Boys,  1882;  The  English  Novel  and  the  Principles  of  Its 
Development,  1883;  Poems  of  Sidney  Lanier,  Edited  ~by  His  Wife,  with  a 
Memorial  by  William  Hayes  Ward,  1884;  Select  Poems  of  Sidney  Lanier, 
edited  with  an  Introduction,  Notes,  and  Bibliography,  by  Morgan  Calla- 
way,  1895;  Music  and  Poetry:  Essays,  1898;  Retrospects  and  Prospects: 
Descriptive  and  Historical  Essays,  1899;  Letters  of  Sidney  Lanier.  Se 
lections  from  His  Correspondence  1'866-1881,  1899;  Shakespeare  and  His 
Forerunners,  1902;  Sidney  Lanier,  by  Edwin  Mims,  1905.  Some  Rem 
iniscences  and  Early  Letters  of  Sidney  Lanier,  G.  H.  Clarke,  1907;  Poem 
Outlines,  1908;  Synthesis  and  Analysis  of  the  Poetry  of  Sidney  Lanier, 
C.  C.  Carroll,  1910. 

IBWIN  RUSSELL.  Poems  ly  Irwin  Russell.  With  an  introduction  by 
Joel  Chandler  Harris.  New  York.  1888. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   ERA   OF   SOUTHERN   THEMES   AND   WRITERS 

Just  as  the  West  of  Mark  Twain,  Harte,  Miller,  Eggleston, 
and  others  had  been  central  in  the  literature,  especially  in  the 
fiction,  of  the  seventies,  so  the  South  became  central  in  the 
eighties.  Southern  writers  like  Cable,  Lanier,  and  Russell  began 
their  distinctive  work  not  long  after  the  opening  of  the  Bret 
Harte  period,  yet  it  was  not  until  after  Old  Creole  Days,  1879, 
the  death  of  Russell  in  the  same  year  and  of  Lanier  in  1881, 
and  the  publication  of  Miss  Woolson's  Rodman  the  Keeper  and 
the  first  Uncle  Remus  book  in  1880,  Johnston's  Dukcsborough 
Tales,  1883,  and  Craddock's  In  the  Tennessee  Mountains,  1884, 
that  what  we  may  call  the  era  of  Southern  themes  and  Southern 
writers  may  be  said  fully  to  have  taken  possession  of  American 
literature.  By  1888  Albion  W.  Tourgee  could  write  in  the 
Forum,  "It  cannot  be  denied  that  American  fiction  of  to-day, 
whatever  may  be  its  origin,  is  predominatingly  Southern  in  type 
and  character.  ...  A  foreigner  studying  our  current  literature, 
without  knowledge  of  our  history,  and  judging  our  civilization 
by  our  fiction,  would  undoubtedly  conclude  that  the  South  was 
the  seat  of  intellectual  empire  in  America  and  the  African  the 
chief  romantic  element  of  our  population." 

The  real  cause  of  this  outburst  has  not  often  been  touched 
upon.  The  sudden  vogue  of  Southern  themes  and  Southern 
writers  came  not,  as  some  have  explained,  from  the  fact  that  a 
distinctive  Southern  literature  had  arisen,  or  that  a  peculiar 
school  had  sprung  up  in  one  section  of  the  country,  just  as,  for 
instance,  we  may  speak  of  the  New  England  school  earlier  in 
the  century.  Nor  is  it  explained  by  the  theory  that  the  close 
of  the  war  brought  a  new  feeling  of  individuality  to  the  South, 
a  consciousness  of  its  own  self  which  was  to  find  expression  in 
a  group  of  writers,  as  England  after  the  wars  with  Spain  found  ex 
pression  in  the  Elizabethans.  It  was  not  a  merely  local  manifesta 
tion.  The  term ' '  Southern  Literature, ' '  as  now  found  in  the  titles 

294 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  295 

of  an  increasing  number  of  books  and  studies,  is  misleading.  If 
the  South,  or  any  other  section,  is  to  produce  a  distinct  literature 
of  its  own,  that  section  must  possess  not  alone  themes  and  writers, 
but  publishers  as  well,  and  widely  circulated  magazines  of  the 
type  of  the  Atlantic  and  the  Century  and  Harper's.  It  must 
have  also  critics  and  adequate  critical  standards,  and,  most  im 
portant  of  all,  it  must  have  a  clientele,  readers  enough  to  dispose 
of  its  own  literary  product.  The  South  has  had  practically  none 
of  these  save  the  literary  themes  and  the  writers.  The  turn  of 
the  tide  from  Western  material  and  Western  workers  to  material 
and  workers  from  the  South  was  a  national  phenomenon.  It 
was  in  reality  more  a  thing  of  the  North  than  it  was  of  the  South. 
Without  Northern  publishers  and  magazines  and  criticism  and 
readers  there  would  have  been  no  Southern  literature. 

To  illustrate  with  a  concrete  example:  Richard  Malcolm 
Johnston  published  at  Augusta,  Georgia,  in  1864,  Georgia 
Sketches  by  an^  Old  Man.  In  1871  he  added  more  tales  to  the 
collection,  published  them  in  the  Southern  Magazine  of  Balti 
more,  issued  them  in  book  form  in  the  same  city,  with  the  title 
Dukesborough  Tales,  and  a  little  later  put  forth  a  second  and 
enlarged  edition.  Yet  Edward  Eggleston  could  say  when  John 
ston  as  late  as  1879  published  his  first  story  in  a  Northern  maga 
zine,  "Mr.  Neelus  Peeler's  Conditions,"  in  Scribner's  Monthly, 
that  the  reading  public  everywhere  hailed  his  advent  as  that  of  a 
new  and  promising  young  man  who  had  sent  in  his  first  story. 
It  was  not  until  the  Harpers  in  1883  issued  a  Northern  edition 
of  the  much-published  Dukesborough  Tales  that  Johnston  ceased 
to  be  a  producer  of  merely  Southern  literature. 

The  cause  of  the  Southern  tone  which  American  literature  took 
on  during  the  eighties  lies  in  the  single  fact  that  the  South  had 
the  literary  material.  The  California  gold,  rich  as  it  was  when 
first  discovered  by  the  East,  was  quickly  exhausted.  There  were 
no  deep  mines;  it  was  surface  gold,  pockets  and  startling  nug 
gets.  Suddenly  it  was  discovered  that  the  South  was  a  field 
infinitely  richer,  and  the  tide  turned.  Nowhere  else  were  to  be 
found  such  a  variety  of  picturesque  types  of  humanity :  negroes, 
crackers,  Creoles,  mountaineers,  moonshiners,  and  all  those  in 
congruous  elements  that  had  resulted  from  the  great  social  up 
heaval  of  1861-1865.  Behind  it  in  an  increasingly  romantic 
perspective  lay  the  old  regime  destroyed  by  the  war ;  nearer  was 


296  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

the  war  itself,  most  heroic  of  struggles;  and  still  nearer  was  the 
tragedy  of  reconstruction  with  its  carpet-bagger,  its  freed  slaves, 
and  its  Klu-Klux  terror.  Never  before  in  America,  even  in  Cali 
fornia,  had  there  been  such  richness  of  literary  material.  That 
a  group  of  Southern-born  writers  should  have  arisen  to  deal  with 
it  was  inevitable.  Who  else  could  have  dealt  with  it,  especially 
in  the  new  era  that  demanded  reality  and  absolute  genuineness? 
No  Northerner  could  have  revealed,  for  instance,  the  heart  of 
the  old  plantation  negro.  Miss  Woolson's  stories  of  the  South, 
brilliant  as  they  are,  are  in  a  different  world  from  those  of  Joel 
Chandler  Harris. 

The  writers  themselves  made  no  claim  that  they  were  pro 
ducing  a  Southern  literature.  They  had,  all  of  them,  been  touched 
by  the  new  after-the-war  spirit,  and  their  outlook  was  nation 
wide.  Cable  in  an  address  at  Oxford,  Mississippi,  in  June,  1882, 
pleaded  for  home  subjects  as  a  basis  for  literature,  but  for  home 
subjects  treated  in  a  spirit  of  the  broadest  nationality:  "Only 
let  them  be  written,"  he  urged,  "to  and  for  the  whole  nation  and 
you  shall  put  your  own  State  not  the  less  but  the  more  in  your 
debt/'1  He  declared  himself  to  be  not  at  all  in  favor  of  the 
popular  new  phrase  "the  new  South";  he  would  change  it,  he 
said,  to  "the  no  South."  Lanier,  as  we  have  seen,  was  American 
in  the  broadest  sense,  and  Joel  Chandler  Harris  could  say: 
1 1  Wliat  does  it  matter  whether  I  am  a  Northerner  or  Southerner  if 
I  am  true  to  truth  and  true  to  that  larger  truth,  my  own  true 
self?  My  idea  is  that  truth  is  more  important  than  sectionalism 
and  that  literature  that  can  be  labeled  Northern,  Southern,  West 
ern,  Eastern,  is  not  worth  labeling."  2 

It  was  the  voice  of  the  new  spirit  of  the  new  age. 


That  the  enormous  vogue  of  the  Bret  Harte  and  the  Pike 
County  Ballads  literature  of  the  early  seventies  could  have  passed 
unnoticed  even  in  the  remotest  sections  of  America  seems  im 
probable,  but  to  attempt  to  trace  the  influence  it  exerted  on  the 
group  of  Southern  writers  that  sprang  up  shortly  after  it  had 
made  its  appearance  is  useless  and  worse  than  useless.  Not  for  a 

1  Boston  Literary  World,  June  28,  1882. 

2  Mima's  Kidney  Lanier,  284. 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  297 

moment  must  it  be  forgotten  that  this  earlier  Western  outburst 
was  not  a  local  evolution  that  succeeded  in  attracting  the  atten 
tion  of  the  nation;  it  was  rather  the  first  result  of  a  condition 
which  was  general  and  nation  wide.  It  was  the  new  after-the- 
war  demand  for  life  and  reality  and  democracy,  and  it  broke  out 
first  in  the  West  because  the  West  at  that  moment  had  material 
which  was  peculiarly  fitted  to  make  an  appeal.  Had  the  West  at 
that  crisis  had  no  writers  ready  to  exploit  this  material,  the  out 
burst  undoubtedly  would  have  come  from  the  South.  Cable  and 
Lanier  and  Johnston  and  Russell  would  have  written  very  much 
as  they  did  write  had  Bret  Harte  and  Mark  Twain  and  Edward 
Eggleston  never  lived. 

There  were  influences  and  conditions  in  the  South  that  were 
peculiarly  favorable  to  the  production  of  the  type  of  literature 
demanded  by  the  time.  Georgia  in  particular  offered  congenial 
soil.  The  middle  region  of  the  State  was  the  most  democratic 
part  of  the  South.  It  had  been  settled  by  a  sturdy  race  which 
separation  from  the  more  aristocratic  areas  had  rendered 
peculiarly  individual.  At  one  extreme  was  the  mountain 
cracker,  a  type  which  had  been  made  peculiar  only  by  isolation, 
at  the  other  were  such  remarkable  men  as  Alexander  H.  Stephens, 
Atticus  G.  Haygood,  Benjamin  H.  Hill,  John  B.  Gordon,  and 
Henry  W.  Grady.  The  social  system  was  peculiar.  Relations 
between  master  and  slave  were  far  different  from  those  found 
on  the  larger  plantations  where  overseers  were  employed.  The 
negroes  were  known  personally ;  they  were  a  part  of  the  family. 
Relations  like  those  described  so  delightfully  by  Joel  Chandler 
Harris  were  common.  "There  was  no  selling,"  as  Johnston  ex 
pressed  it;  "black  and  white  children  grew  up  together.  Serv 
ants  descended  from  father  to  son."  The  result  of  this  de 
mocracy  was  a  natural  tendency  toward  the  new  realistic  type 
of  localized  literature.  While  the  rest  of  the  South  had  been 
romantic  and  little  inclined  to  use  its  own  backgrounds  and  its 
own  local  types  of  character,  Georgia  had  been  producing  since 
the  mid  years  of  the  century  studies  of  its  own  peculiar  types 
and  institutions. 

As  early  as  1835  had  appeared  Georgia  Scenes,  Characters, 
Incidents,  etc.,  in  the  First  Half  Century  of  the  Republic.  By 
a  Native  Georgian,  from  the  pen  of  Augustus  B.  Longstreet, 
graduate  of  Yale,  lawyer,  preacher,  college  president.  It  was 


298  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

republished  in  New  York  in  1840  and  from  that  day  it  has  never 
been  out  of  print.  A  realistic,  brutal  series  of  sketches  it  is,  full 
of  ear-chewing  fights,  cruel  gougings,  horse-racings,  horse-swaps, 
coarse  practical  jokes,  and  all  the  barbarous  diversions  of  a 
primitive  people  in  a  primitive  time.  Its  author  apologizes  in 
his  preface  for  the  ephemeral  character  of  the  book:  the  stories 
and  sketches,  he  explains,  are  " nothing  more  than  fanciful  com 
binations  of  real  incidents  and  characters."  Yet  few  books  of 
its  decade  have  had  more  vitality.  The  author  worked  first  hand 
in  the  materials  of  the  life  that  he  himself  had  seen  about  him. 
It  is  true  at  every  point.  Its  author,  a  generation  ahead  of 
his  times,  summed  up  in  one  phrase  the  new  realism  that  was 
to  come:  "real  people  and  real  incidents  in  fanciful  combina 
tions." 

Associated  with  Longstreet  in  this  earlier  realistic  period  of 
Georgia  were  Oliver  Hillhouse  Prince  (1787-1837),  who  con 
tributed  to  Georgia  Scenes  "The  Militia  Drill,"  a  sketch  read 
perhaps  by  Thomas  Hardy  before  he  wrote  his  Trumpet-Major, 
and  William  Tappan  Thompson  (1812-1882),  whose  Major 
Jones's  Chronicles  appeared  in  book  form  in  Philadelphia  in 
1840. 

There  was  another  element  in  Georgia  during  the  earlier 
period  which  had  strong  influence  upon  the  later  group  of 
writers,  and  allowed  it  to  produce  not  only  Richard  Malcolm 
Johnston  and  Joel  Chandler  Harris  and  "Bill  Arp,"  but  poets 
like  Ticknor  and  Lanier  as  well.  In  the  cities  and  larger  towns 
of  the  State  there  was  an  atmosphere  of  culture  unique  in  the 
South.  Harry  Stillwell  Edwards  would  account  for  it  by  calling 
attention  to  an  element  usually  overlooked: 

In  the  late  thirties— 1839  to  be  exact— Wesleyan  Female  College 
came  into  being  at  Macon — the  first  chartered  college  for  women  in 
the  world,  and  soon  began  to  turn  out  large  classes  of  highly  educated 
and  accomplished  graduates.  The  majority  of  these  came  from 
Georgia,  but  the  whole  South  has  always  been  represented  in  Wesleyan. 
Without  going  into  this  subject,  I  wish  to  state  as  my  personal  opinion 
that  Georgia's  literary  development,  which  is  undoubtedly  more  exten 
sive  than  that  of  other  Southern  States,  is  due  to  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  soil  or  environment  produced  by  this  College  in  the  fifty  years 
of  its  existence  previous  to  1890.  You  will  understand  how  this  can  be 
trw  though  the  mothers  of  the  State's  best  known  writers  may  not  have 
been  graduates.  In  my  youth,  every  girl  associate  I  had  was  of  this 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  299 

college.     Its  atmosphere  was  everywhere  apparent.     To-day  its  grad 
uates  lead  all  over  the  State.3 

One  may  trace  these  elements — the  Longstreet  realism  at  the 
one  extreme  and  the  Macon  College  influence  at  the  other — in  all 
the  later  Georgia  writers.  We  have  found  how  Lanier  in  his 
earlier  work  alternated  between  broad  cracker  sketches  and 
dialect  ballads  and  the  more  elegant  forms  of  prose  and  poetry. 
Even  a  poem  as  rhapsodic  as  his  "Corn"  contains  within  it  a 
realistic  picture  of  the  thriftless  Georgia  planter.  It  was  from 
the  blending  of  these  two  streams  of  influence  that  there  came 
some  of  the  strongest  literature  of  the  new  period. 


II 

The  link  between  Longstreet  and  the  younger  Georgia  writers 
is  to  be  found  in  Richard  Malcolm  Johnston.  Chronologically — 
he  was  born  in  1822 — he  belongs  to  the  earlier  group,  the  gen 
eration  of  Lowell  and  Story,  Boker  and  Read  and  Edward 
Everett  Hale,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  touched  not  at  all  by 
the  literary  influences  that  had  so  strongly  exerted  themselves 
upon  the  writers  of  the  seventies.  He  was  reared  on  a  central 
Georgia  plantation  with  all  the  surroundings  of  the  old  regime ; 
he  had  been  educated  in  the  type  of  rural  school  so  graphically 
described  in  his  earlier  sketches  and  then  later  at  Mercer  Col 
lege,  from  which  he  was  graduated  in  1841 ;  he  gave  the  vigorous 
years  of  his  life  to  the  law  and  then  to  teaching;  and  after  he 
was  sixty  years  of  age  began  seriously  to  devote  himself  to  the 
profession  of  literature. 

As  early  as  1857  he  had  begun  writing  sketches  of  provincial 
life  after  the  Longstreet  pattern.  His  first  piece,  "The  Goose 
Pond  School"  was  followed  at  long  intervals  by  others  in  the 
same  vein,  written,  the  greater  part  of  them,  after  his  removal  to 
Baltimore  partly  to  assist  his  friend  Turnbull,  the  editor  of 
the  Southern  Magazine,  who  had  asked  for  his  help,  and  partly 
"to  subdue  as  far  as  possible  the  feeling  of  homesickness  for  my 
native  region.  It  never  occurred  to  me  that  they  were  of  any 
sort  of  value.  Yet  when  a  collection  of  them,  nine  in  all,  was 
printed  by  Mr.  Turnbull,  who  about  that  time  ended  publication 
of  his  magazine,  and  when  a  copy  of  this  collection  fell  into  the 

«  Letter  to  the  Author,  December,  1914. 


300  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

hands  of  Henry  M.  Alden,  of  Harper's  Magazine,  whose  acquaint 
ance  I  had  lately  made,  he  expressed  much  surprise  that  I  had 
not  received  any  pecuniary  compensation,  and  added  that  he 
would  have  readily  accepted  them  if  they  had  been  offered  to 
him.  Several  things  he  said  about  them  that  surprised  and 
gratified  me  much.  I  then  set  into  the  pursuit  of  that  kind  of 
work."4 

Johnston  owed  his  introduction  to  Northern  readers  almost 
wholly  to  Lanier,  who  also  was  an  exile  in  Baltimore.  His  in 
fluence  it  was  that  induced  Gilder  to  accept  for  Scribner's 
Monthly  the  first  of  the  Dukesborough  Tales  to  be  published  in 
the  North.  He  did  far  more  than  this :  he  gave  him  constructive 
criticism;  he  pointed  out  to  him  weaknesses  which  might  be 
tolerated  in  a  pioneer  like  Longstreet,  but  not  in  the  work  of  a 
later  artist.  Certain  phases  of  his  sketches  he  found  exceedingly 
strong:  "The  story  strikes  me  as  exquisitely  funny,  and  your 
reproduction  of  the  modes  of  thought  and  of  speech  among  the 
rural  Georgians  is  really  wonderful."6  There  were,  however, 
frequent  "verbal  lapses"  which  were  almost  fatal,  "the  action 
of  the  story  does  not  move  fast  enough,"  and  the  catastrophe  is 
clumsily  handled.  "I  will  try  to  see  you  in  a  day  or  two  and 
do  this"  [read  the  manuscript  aloud  to  him  with  running 
criticisms].  It  was  an  opportunity  that  few  authors  ever  get; 
and  Johnston  was  wise  enough  to  make  the  fullest  use  of  it. 
Through  Lanier  it  was  that  Alden  became  acquainted  with  his 
work  and  that  the  enlarged  Dukesborough  Tales  was  taken  over 
by  the  Harpers,  and  it  was  only  after  the  Northern  issue  of  this 
book  in  1883  that  its  author  took  a  place  among  the  writers  of 
the  period.  During  the  following  fifteen  years  he  wrote  vo 
luminously. 

Lanier 's  criticism  touches  with  skill  the  strength  and  the  weak 
ness  of  Johnston  as  a  writer  of  fiction.  Like  Longstreet,  he  was 
preeminently  a  maker  of  sketches.  In  his  novels  like  Old  Mark 
Langston  and  Widow  Guthrie  he  failed  dismally.  Local  color 
there  is  and  humor  and  characterization,  but  in  all  that  pertains 
to  plot  management  the  novels  are  feeble.  The  center  and  soul 
of  his  art  was  the  Georgia  environment.  "As  long  as  the  people 
in  my  stories  have  no  fixed  surroundings,  they  are  nowhere  to 

*  Autobiography,  72. 

«  Mima's  Sidney  Lanier,  297. 


SOUTHEEN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  301 

me;  I  cannot  get  along  with  them  at  all."  There  is  little  of 
story,  little  of  action,  little  consideration  of  the  deeper  passions 
and  motives  of  life:  there  is  rather  an  artless  presentation  of 
the  archaic  provincial  types  and  surroundings  that  he  had  known 
in  his  boyhood.  Even  within  this  restricted  area  his  range 
was  narrow.  He  seemed  to  be  attracted,  as  was  Longstreet, 
by  the  eccentric  and  the  exceptional.  As  he  looked  back  into  his 
earlier  years  it  was  only  the  highly  individualized  characters 
and  surroundings  that  stood  out  in  his  memory,  and  he  peopled 
his  stories  largely  with  these.  Like  Lincoln  he  had  traveled  a 
primitive  legal  circuit  in  primitive  days  and  he  had  had  unique 
experiences  highly  laughable.  His  range  of  characters  also  is 
small.  There  is  little  of  the  negro  in  his  work:  he  deals  almost 
wholly  with  the  class  of  middle  Georgia  common  people  that  are 
but  one  step  removed  from  the  mountain  cracker  of  Harris  and 
Harbin. 

Johnston  was  to  the  Southern  movement  what  Eggleston  was  to 
the  "Western.  The  two  have  many  points  of  resemblance.  Both 
were  humorists,  both  worked  in  the  crude  materials  of  early 
American  life,  and  both  seem  to  have  evolved  their  methods  and 
their  literary  ideals  very  largely  from  themselves.  Neither  was 
an  artist.  They  will  live  largely  because  of  their  fidelity  to  a 
vanished  area  of  American  life. 


Ill 

Joel  Chandler  Harris  also  continued  the  tradition  of  Long- 
street  and  worked  in  the  materials  of  Georgia  life  with  little 
suggestion  from  without.  There  are  few  instances  of  a  more 
spontaneous  lapsing  into  literary  expression.  He  had  been  reared 
in  an  environment  as  unliterary  as  Mark  Twain's.  Longstreet 
and  Johnston,  Russell  and  Lanier,  were  all  college  men,  but 
Harris's  school  education  ended  when  he  was  twelve,  and  the 
episode  that  ended  it,  a  most  unusual  one,  he  has  described  thus : 

One  day  while  Joe  Maxwell  was  sitting  in  the  post-office  looking  over 
the  Milledgeville  papers,  his  eye  fell  on  an  advertisement  that  interested 
him  greatly.  It  seemed  to  bring  the  whole  world  nearer  to  him.  The 
advertisement  set  forth  the  fact  that  on  next  Tuesday  the  first  number 
of  the  Countryman,  a  weekly  paper,  would  be  published.  It  would  be 
modeled  after  Mr.  Addison's  little  paper,  the  Spectator,  Mr.  Gold 
smith's  little  paper,  the  Bee,  and  Mr.  Johnson's  little  paper,  the  Earn- 


302  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

bier.  It  would  be  edited  by  J.  A.  Turner,  and  it  would  be  issued  on 
the  plantation  of  the  editor,  nine  miles  from  Hillsborough.  Joe  read 
this  advertisement  over  a  dozen  times,  and  it  was  with  a  great  deal  of 
impatience  that  he  waited  for  the  next  Tuesday  to  come. 

But  the  day  did  come,  and  with  it  came  the  first  issue  of  the  Country 
man.  Joe  read  it  from  beginning  to  end,  advertisements  and  all,  and 
he  thought  it  the  most  entertaining  little  paper  he  had  ever  seen. 
Among  the  interesting  things  was  an  announcement  by  the  editor  that 
he  wanted  a  boy  to  learn  the  printing  business.  Joe  borrowed  pen  and 
ink  and  some  paper  from  the  friendly  postmaster,  and  wrote  a  letter  to 
the  editor,  saying  that  he  would  be  glad  to  learn  the  printing  business. 
The  letter  was  no  doubt  an  awkward  one,  but  it  served  its  purpose,  for 
when  the  editor  of  the  Countryman  came  to  Hillsborough  he  hunted 
Joe  up,  and  told  him  to  get  ready  to  go  to  the  plantation.  .  .  . 

[The  office]  was  a  very  small  affair;  the  type  was  old  and  worn,  and 
the  hand-press — a  Washington  No.  2 — had  seen  considerable  service. 
.  .  .  He  quickly  mastered  the  boxes  of  the  printer's  case,  and  before 
many  days  was  able  to  set  type  swiftly  enough  to  be  of  considerable  help 
to  Mr.  Snelson,  who  was  foreman,  compositor,  and  pressman.  The 
one  queer  feature  about  the  Countryman  was  the  fact  that  it  was  the* 
only  plantation  newspaper  that  has  ever  been  published,  the  nearest 
post-office  being  nine  miles  away.  It  might  be  supposed  that  such  ? 
newspaper  would  be  a  failure ;  but  the  Countryman  was  a  success  from 
the  start,  and  at  one  time  it  reached  a  circulation  of  nearly  two  thousand 
copies.  The  editor  was  a  very  original  writer. 

On  the  Plantation:  a  Story  of  a  Georgia  Boy's  Adventures 
during  the  War  is  the  record,  slightly  disguised — Joe  Maxwell 
is  Joe  Harris,  and  Hillsborough  is  Eatonton — of  the  four  years 
in  the  boy's  life  that  made  of  him  the  Joel  Chandler  Harris  that 
we  know  to-day.  It  was  his  college  course,  and  it  was  a  mar- 
velously  complete  one.  He  became  a  part  of  the  great  planta 
tion;  he  shared  its  rude  festivities;  he  came  closely  in  contact 
with  the  old-time  type  of  plantation  negro;  and,  more  impor 
tant  still,  he  discovered  his  employer's  great  library  and  was 
directed  in  his  reading  by  Mrs.  Turner,  who  took  pains  with 
the  diffident  young  lad.  In  time  he  became  himself  a  contributor 
to  the  paper,  secretly  at  first,  then  openly  with  the  editor's  ap 
proval.  The  end  of  the  war  and  with  it  the  end  of  the  old 
plantation  regime,  ended  also  the  Countryman  and  sent  Harris 
into  wider  fields. 

For  a  time  he  worked  at  Macon,  home  of  Lanier,  then  at  New 
Orleans,  where  Cable  in  the  intervals  of  office  work  was  dream 
ing  over  the  old  French  and  Spanish  records,  then  for  a  time  he 
was  editor  of  the  Forsyth,  Georgia,  Advertiser.  The  force  and 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  303 

originality  of  his  editorials  attracted  at  length  the  attention  of 
W.  T.  Thompson,  author  of  the  Georgia  classic,  Major  Jones's 
Courtship,  and  in  1871  he  secured  him  for  his  own  paper,  the 
Savannah  News.  Five  years  later,  Harris  went  over  to  the  At 
lanta  Constitution  and  during  the  twenty-five  years  that  followed 
his  life  was  a  vital  part  of  that  journal's  history. 

One  must  approach  the  literary  work  of  Harris  always  with 
full  realization  that  he  was  first  of  all  a  journalist.  During  the 
greater  part  of  his  life  he  gave  the  best  of  every  day  unreservedly 
to  the  making  of  his  paper.  Literary  fame  came  to  him  almost 
by  accident.  To  fill  the  inexorable  columns  of  his  paper  he  threw 
in  what  came  easiest  for  him  to  write  and  he  thought  no  more 
about  it.  Then  one  day  he  looked  up  from  his  desk  to  find  him 
self  hailed  as  a  rising  man  of  letters.  It  amazed  him ;  he  never 
half  believed  it;  he  never  got  accustomed  to  it.  Years  later  in 
the  full  noon  of  his  success  he  could  say :  l '  People  insist  on  con 
sidering  me  a  literary  man  when  I  am  a  journalist  and  nothing 
else.  I  have  no  literary  training  and  know  nothing  at  all  of 
what  is  termed  literary  art.  I  have  had  no  opportunity  to 
nourish  any  serious  literary  ambition,  and  the  probability  is  that 
if  such  an  opportunity  had  presented  itself  I  would  have  refused 
to  take  advantage  of  it."  Never  once  did  he  seek  for  publica 
tion;  never  once  did  he  send  a  manuscript  to  any  publisher  or 
magazine  that  had  not  earnestly  begged  for  it;  never  once  did 
he  write  a  line  with  merely  literary  intent. 

His  first  recognition  by  the  literary  world  came  through  a 
bit  of  mere  journalism.  The  story  is  told  best  in  the  words  of 
Harry  Stillwell  Edwards: 

About  1880,  Sam  Small  of  Atlanta,  Georgia,  on  the  local  staff  of  the 
Constitution ,  began  writing  negro  sketches,  using  "Old  Si"  or  "Uncle 
Si"  as  his  vehicle,  and  soon  made  the  character  famous.  Small,  how 
ever,  was  very  dissipated,  and  frequently  the  Sunday  morning  Old  Si 
contribution  failed  to  appear.  Joel  Chandler  Harris,  the  paragrapher 
for  the  Constitution  as  he  had  been  for  the  Sanannah  News,  was  called 
on  to  supply  something  in  place  of  the  missing  Si  sketches  and  began 
with  "Uncle  Remus."  His  first  contributions  were  not  folk  lore,  but 
local.  He  soon  drifted  into  the  folk  lore,  however,  and  recognizing  the 
beauty  and  perfection  of  his  work,  people  generally  who  remembered 
the  stories  of  their  childhood,  wrote  out  for  him  the  main  points  and 
sent  them.  I,  myself,  contributed  probably  a  dozen  of  the  adventures  of 
Brer  Rabbit  as  I  had  heard  them.  This  service  he  afterwards  acknowl- 


304  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

edged  in  a  graceful  card  of  thanks.     Uncle  Remus  became,  soon,  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  generation,  so  far  as  animal  legends  are  concerned. 

The  stories  at  once  attracted  attention  in  the  North.  The 
New  York  Evening  Post  and  the  Springfield  Republican  in  par 
ticular  made  much  of  them.  As  a  direct  result,  Uncle  Rrtnux: 
His  Songs  and  Sayings;  The  Folk-lore  of  the  old  Plantation, 
appeared  in  1880  and  its  author  quickly  found  himself  a  national 
and  indeed  an  international  personage. 

The  really  vital  work  of  Harris  lies  in  two  fields :  sketches  of 
the  old-time  negro  and  sketches  of  the  mountain  cracker  of  the 
latt-r  period.  It  is  upon  the  •  first  that  his  permanence  as  a 
writer  must  depend.  He  worked  in  negro  folk  lore,  in  that  vast 
field  of  animal  stories  which  seems  to  be  a  part  of  the  childhood 
of  races,  but  it  is  not  his  folk  lore,  valuable  as  it  may  be,  that 
gives  him  distinction.  Ethnological  and  philological  societies 
have  done  the  work  more  scientifically.  Many  of  the  animal 
legends  in  common  use  among  the  slaves  of  the  South  were  al 
ready  in  print  before  he  began  to  write.6  What  he  did  was  to 
paint  a  picture,  minutely  accurate,"  of  the  negro  whom  he  had 
known  intimately  on  the  plantation  of  Mr.  Turner  at  the  transi 
tion  moment  when  the  old  was  passing  into  the  new.  With  a 
thousand  almost  imperceptible  touches  he  has  made  a  picture 
that  is  complete  and  that  is  alive.  The  childish  ignorance  of 
the  race  and  yet  its  subtle  cunning,  its  quaint  humor,  its  pathos, 
its  philosophy,  its  conceit,  its  mendacity  and  yet  its  depth  of 
character,  its  quickness  at  repartee — nothing  has  been  omitted. 
The  story  teller  is  more  valuable  than  his  story :  he  is  recording 
unconsciously  to  himself  his  own  soul  and  the  soul  of  his  race. 
Brer  Rabbit  after  all  is  but  a  negro  in  thinnest  disguise,  one  does 
not  have  to  see  Frost's  marvelous  drawings  to  realize  that. 
The  rabbit's  helplessness  typifies  the  helplessness  of  the  negro, 
and  yet  Brer  Rabbit  always  wins.  Suavity  and  duplicity  and 
shifty  tricks  are  the  only  defense  the  weak  may  have.  His 
ruses  are  the  ruses  of  a  childlike  mind.  Clumsy  in  the  extreme 
and  founded  on  what  seems  like  the  absolute  stupidity  of  Brer 
Fox  and  Brer  Wolf  and  the  others  who  are  beguiled,  these  ruses 
always  succeed.  The  helpless  little  creature  is  surrounded  on 
all  sides  by  brutality  and  superior  force;  they  seemingly  over- 

«  See  Riverside  Magazine,  November,  1868,  and  March,  1869;  also  Inde 
pendent,  September  2,  1875. 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  305 

come  him,  but  in  the  end  they  are  defeated  and  always  by  force 
of  superior  cunning  and  skilful  mendacity  at  the  supreme  mo 
ment.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  the  child  story — the  giant  killed 
by  Jack,  the  wolf  powerless  to  overcome  Little  Red  Riding  Hood, 
and  all  the  others — for  the  negro  himself  was  but  a  child. 

Page  uses  the  negro  as  an  accessory.  The  pathos  of  the  black 
race  adds  pathos  to  the  story  of  the  destroyed  white  regime. 
Harris  rose  superior  to  Page  in  that  he  made  the  negro  not  the 
background  for  a  white  aristocracy,  but  a  living  creature  valu 
able  for  himself  alone ;  and  he  rose  superior  to  Russell  inasmuch 
as  he  embodied  the  result  of  his  studies  not  in  a  type  but  in  a 
single  negro  personality  to  which  he  gave  the  breath  of  life. 
Harris's  negro  is  the  type  plus  the  personal  equation  of  an  in 
dividual — Uncle  Remus,  one  of  the  few  original  characters  which 
America  has  added  to  the  world's  gallery. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  too  that  he  interpreted  with  the  same 
patience  and  thoroughness  the  music  and  the  poetry  of  the  negro. 
Russell  was  a  lyrist  with  the  gift  of  intuition  and  improvisation ; 
Harris  was  a  deliberate  recorder.  The  songs  he  wrote  are  not 
literary  adaptations,  nor  are  they  framed  after  the  conventional 
minstrel  pattern.  They  are  reproductions.  In  his  first  intro 
duction  to  Uncle  Remus,  His  Songs  and  His  Sayings  he  wrote: 

As  to  the  songs,  the  reader  is  warned  that  it  will  be  found  difficult 
to  make  them  conform  to  the  ordinary  rules  of  versification,  nor  is  it 
intended  that  they  should  so  conform.  They  are  written,  and  are  in 
tended  to  be  read,  solely  in  reference  to  the  regular  invariable  recur 
rence  of  the  caBsura,  as,  for  instance,  the  first  stanza  of  the  Revival 
Hymn: 

Oh,  whar  |  shill  we  go  |  w'en  de  great  |  day  comes  | 

Wid  de  blow  |  in'  er  de  trumpits  |  en  de  bang  |  in'  er  de  drums  | 

Hoy  man  |  y  po'  sin  |  ers  '11  be  kotch'd  |  out  late  | 

En  fine  |  no  latch  |  ter  de  gold  |  en  gate  [ 

In  other  words,  the  songs  depend  for  their  melody  and  rhythm  upon 
the  musical  quality  of  time,  and  not  upon  long  or  short,  accented  or 
unaccented,  syllables.  I  am  persuaded  that  this  fact  led  Mr.  Sidney 
Lanier,  who  is  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  metrical  peculiarities  of 
negro  songs,  into  the  exhaustive  investigation  which  has  resulted  in  the 
publication  of  his  scholarly  treatise  on  The  Science  of  English  Verse. 

Nowhere  else  does  one  come  so  completely  into  the  feeling  of 
negro  music  as  in  Harris.  In  "The  Night  Before  Christmas," 


306  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

in  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus,  a  latter-day  "Sir  Roger  de  Coverley 
Paper, ' '  we  feel  the  tone  of  it : 

Hi-  voice  was  strong  and  powerful,  and  sweet,  and  its  range  was  as 
astonishing  as  its  volume.  More  than  this,  the  melody  to  which  he 
tuned  it,  and  which  was  caught  up  by  a  hundred  voices  almost  as  sweet 
and  as  powerful  as  his  own,  was  charged  with  a  mysterious  and  pathetic 
tenderness.  The  fine  company  of  men  and  women  at  the  big  house — 
men  and  women  who  had  made  the  tour  of  all  the  capitals  of  Europe — 
listened  with  swelling  hearts  and  with  tears  in  their  eyes  as  the  song 
rose  and  fell  upon  the  air — at  one  moment  a  tempest  of  melody,  at 
another  a  heart-breaking  strain  breathed  softly  and  sweetly  to  the  gentle 
winds.  The  song  that  the  little  boy  and  the  fine  company  heard  was 
something  like  this — ridiculous  enough  when  put  in  cold  type,  but 
powerful  and  thrilling  when  joined  to  the  melody  with  which  the 
negroes  had  invested  it : 

De  big  Owl  holler  en  cry  fer  his  mate, 

My  honey,  my  love! 
Oh,  don't  stay  long!   oh,  don't  stay  late! 

My  honey,  my  love! 
Hit  ain't  so  mighty  fur  ter  de  good-by  gate, 

My  honey,  my  love! 
Whar  we  all  got  ter  go  w'en  we  sing  out  dc  night, 

My  honey,  my  love! 

My  honey,  my  love,  my  heart's  delight — 
My  honey,  my  love! 


IV 

With  the  success  of  the  first  Uncle  Remus  book  there  came  the 
greatest  flood  of  dialect  literature  that  America  has  ever  known. 
The  years  1883  and  1884  mark  the  high  tide  of  this  peculiar  out 
break,  and  to  Georgia  more  than  to  any  other  locality  may  be 
traced  the  primal  cause.  In  1883  came  what  may  be  called  the 
resurgence  of  the  cracker,  that  Southeastern  variety  of  the 
Pike  which  now  came  to  the  North  as  a  new  discovery.  The 
leading  characteristics  of  the  type  were  thus  set  forth  by  Harris 
in  his  story  of  "Mingo": 

Slow  in  manner  and  speech,  shiftless  in  appearance,  hospitable  but 
suspicious  toward  strangers,  un progressive,  toughly  enduring  the  poor, 
hard  conditions  of  their  lives,  and  oppressed  with  the  melancholy 
silences  of  the  vast,  shaggy  mountain  solitudes  among  which  they  dwell. 
The  women  are  lank,  sallow,  dirty.  They  rub  snuff,  smoke  pipes — 
even  the  young  girls — and  are  great  at  the  frying  pan;  full  of  a  com 
plaining  patience  and  a  sullen  fidelity. 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  307 

Again  America  became  excited  over  a  new  Pike  County  type. 
Johnston's  Dukesborough  Tales  were  issued  for  the  first  time 
in  the  North;  Harris's  "At  Teague  Poteet's,  a  Sketch  of  the 
Hog  Mountain  Range,"  appeared  in  the  June  Century,  and 
Charles  Egbert  Craddock's  story  of  the  same  mountains,  "The 
Harnt  that  Walks  Chilhowee,"  came  out  the  same  month  in  the 
Atlantic.  That  was  in  1883.  The  next  year  appeared  Harris's 
Mingo,  and  Craddock's  In  the  Tennessee  Mountains.  Then  the 
flood  gates  of  dialect  were  loosened.  The  Century  published 
Page's  story  "Mars  Chan,"  which  it  had  been  holding  for  four 
years,  a  story  told  entirely  in  the  negro  dialect.  The  new  and 
mysterious  Craddock,  who  was  found  now  to  be  Miss  Mary  N. 
Murfree,  created  a  wide-spread  sensation.  In  1883  appeared 
James  Whitcomb  Riley's  first  book  The  Old  Swimmin'-Hole  and 
'Leven  More  Poems  and  Mary  Hallock  Foote's  The  Led-Horse 
Claim;  in  1887  came  Octave  Thanet's  Knitters  in  the  Sun, 
dialect  tales  of  the  Arkansas  canebrakes,  and  shortly  afterwards 
Hamlin  Garland's  studies  of  farm  life  in  the  middle  West.' 
The  eighties  stand  for  the  complete  triumph  of  dialect  and  of 
local  color. 

Henry  James,  viewing  the  phenomenon  from  his  English  stand 
point,  offered  an  explanation  that  is  worthy  of  note :  ' '  Noth 
ing  is  more  striking,"  he  wrote,  "than  the  invasive  part  played 
by  the  element  of  dialect  in  the  subject-matter  of  the  American 
fictions  of  the  day.  Nothing  like  it,  probably — nothing  like  any 
such  predominance — exists  in  English,  in  French,  in  German 
work  of  the  same  order.  It  is  a  part,  in  its  way,  to  all  ap 
pearance,  of  the  great  general  wave  of  curiosity  on  the  sub 
ject  of  the  soul  aboundingly  not  civilized  that  has  lately  begun 
to  well  over  the  Anglo-Saxon  globe  and  that  has  borne  Mr.  Rud-t 
yard  Kipling,  say,  so  supremely  high  on  its  crest." 

Harris's  work  with  the  Georgia  cracker,  though  small  in 
quantity,  is  of  permanent  value.  IJnlike  Craddock,  he  was  upon 
his  native  ground  and  he  worked  with  sympathy.  He  had  not 
the  artistic  distinction  and  the  ideality  of  Page,  but  he  was  able 
to  bring  his  reader  nearer  to  the  material  in  which  he  worked. 
Page  was  romantic  and  his  standpoint  was  essentially  aristocratic ; 
Harris  was  realistic  and  democratic.  He  worked  close  always  to 
the  fundamentals  of  human  life  and  his  creations  have  always 
the  seeming  spontan^ousness  of  nature  itself. 


308  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

As  a  writer  Harris  must  be  summed  up  as  being  essentially 
fragmentary.  His  literary  output  was  the  work  of  a  man  who 
could  write  only  in  the  odd  moments  stolen  from  an  exacting 
profession.  It  is  work  done  by  snatches.  He  left  no  long  mas 
terpiece  ;  his  novels  like  Gabriel  Tolliver  and  the  rest  are  full  of 
delightful  fragments,  but  they  are  rambling  and  incoherent. 
Of  Plantation  Pageants  its  author  himself  could  say,  "  Glancing 
back  over  its  pages,  it  seems  to  be  but  a  patchwork  of  memories 
and  fancies,  a  confused  dream  of  old  times.'*  With  his  Brer 
Rabbit  sketches,  however,  this  criticism  does  not  hold.  By  their 
very  nature  they  are  fragmentary;  there  was  no  call  for  con 
tinued  effort  or  for  constructive  power;  the  only  demand  was 
for  a  consistent  personality  that  should  emerge  from  the  final 
collection  and  dominate  it,  and  this  demand  he  met  to  the 
full. 

No  summary  of  Harris's  work  can  be  better  than  his  own  com 
ment  once  uttered  upon  Huckleberry  Finn:  "It  is  history,  it 
is  romance,  it  is  life.  Here  we  behold  a  human  character  stripped 
of  all  tiresome  details;  we  see  people  growing  and  living;  we 
laugh  at  their  humor,  share  their  griefs,  and,  in  the  midst  of  it 
all,  behold  we  are  taught  the  lesson  of  honesty,  justice,  and 
mercy. "  To  no  one  could  this  verdict  apply  more  conspicuously 
than  to  the  creator  of  Uncle  Remus  and  of  Teague  Poteet. 


To  the  Georgia  group  belongs  in  reality  Mary  Noailles  Mur- 
free,  better  known  as  Charles  Egbert  Craddock.  Tennessee,  her 
native  State — she  was  born  at  Murfreesboro  in  1850 — was  of 
Georgia  settlement.  On  one  side  of  the  border  as  on  the  other 
one  found  a  certain  wild  independence  and  originality  and  crude 
democracy,  the  same  that  voiced  itself  in  Longstreet  and  Thomp 
son,  and  later  in  Johnston  and  Harris.  Moreover,  the  moun 
tains  of  the  Craddock  tales  lie  along  the  Georgia  border  and 
their  inhabitants  are  the  same  people  who  figured  in  Longstreet 's 
"Gander  Pulling"  and  furnished  Gorm  Smallin  and  Teague 
Poteet  for  Lanier  and  Harris. 

During  the  seventeen  years  of  her  later  childhood  and  youth, 
or  from  1856  to  1873,  Miss  Murfree  lived  at  Nashville,  Tennessee, 
where  her  father  had  an  extensive  legal  practice,  and  then  until 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  309 

1882  she  made  her  home  at  St.  Louis,  Missouri.  She  was,  there 
fore,  unlike  Johnston  and  Harris,  metropolitan  in  training  and 
in  point  of  view.  Lameness  and  a  certain  frailness  of  physique 
caused  by  a  fever  debarred  her  from  the  activities  of  childhood 
and  drove  her  in  upon  herself  for  entertainment.  She  was  pre 
cocious  and  she  read  enormously,  pursuing  her  studies  even  intc 
the  French  and  the  Italian.  Later  she  attended  the  academy  at 
Nashville  and  then  a  seminary  at  Philadelphia,  and,  on  her  re 
turn  home,  even  began  the  study  of  law  in  her  father's  library. 

For  such  a  woman,  especially  in  the  seventies,  literature  as  a 
profession  was  inevitable.  She  began  to  write  early  and  some  of 
her  apprentice  papers,  signed  even  then  with  the  pen  name 
Charles  E.  Craddock,  found  publication,  notably  a  few  sketches 
and  tales  in  the  weekly  Applet  on' s  Journal.  It  was  conventional 
work  and  it  promised  little.  Between  a  sketch  like  ' '  Taking  the 
Blue  Ribbon  at  the  Fair"  and  "The  Dancin'  Party  at  Harrison's 
Cove,"  which  appeared  in  the  May  issue  of  the  Atlantic,  1878, 
there  is  a  gulf  that  even  yet  has  not  been  fully  explained.  Un 
doubtedly  the  early  models  that  influenced  her  were  George 
Eliot,  Thomas  Hardy,  and  Bret  Harte,  but  she  has  preserved  lit 
tle  of  her  transition  work.  She  came  unheralded  with  her  art 
fully  matured.  Whoever  may  have  been  her  early  masters,  she 
was  from  the  first  autochthonic  in  style  and  material  and  in  the 
atmosphere  that  she  threw  over  all  that  she  wrote.  There  was  a 
newness  to  her  work,  a  tang  of  the  wild  and  elemental  in  the 
dialect,  a  convincing  quality  to  the  backgrounds  painted  in 
sentences  like  "An  early  moon  was  riding,  clear  and  full,  over 
this  wild  spur  of  the  Alleghanies, "  that  excited  wide  comment. 
It  was  not  until  1884,  however,  that  the  new  author  may  be 
said  definitely  to  have  arrived,  for  it  was  not  until  then  that  her 
stories  were  given  the  dignity  of  book  form. 

With  the  publication  of  In  the  Tennessee  Mountains  came  one 
of  the  most  dramatic  happenings  that  ever  gave  wings  to  a  new 
book.  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  visited  the  Atlantic  office  and, 
to  the  amazement  of  Aldrich  and  Howells  and  Dr.  Holmes,  he 
was  a  woman.  The  sensation,  coming  as  it  did  from  the  center 
of  the  old  New  England  tradition,  gave  the  book  at  once  an  in 
ternational  fame  and  made  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  a  name  as 
widely  known  as  Dr.  Holmes.  She  followed  her  early  success 
with  a  long  series  of  Tennessee  mountain  novels.  Six  of  them — 


310  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  Prophet  of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains,  In  the  Clouds,  The 
Despot  of  Broomsedge  Cove,  His  Vanished  Star,  The  Mystery  of 
Witch  face  Mountain,  and  The  Juggler — first  appeared  serially  in 
the  Atlantic,  and,  for  a  time  at  least,  it  seemed  as  if  her  work  had 
taken  its  place  among  the  American  classics. 


VI 

Criticism  of  the  Craddock  novels  must  begin  always  with  the 
statement  that  their  author  was  not  a  native  of  the  region  with 
which  she  dealt.  She  had  been  born  into  an  old  Southern  family 
with  wealth  and  traditions,  and  she  had  been  reared  in  a  city 
amid  culture  and  a  Southern  social  regime.  The  Tennessee  moun 
tains  she  knew  only  as  a  summer  visitor  may  know  them.  For 
fifteen  summers  she  went  to  the  little  mountain  town  of  Beersheba, 
prototype  undoubtedly  of  the  "New  Helvetia  Springs"  of  her 
novels,  and  from  there  made  excursions  into  the  wilder  regions. 
She  saw  the  mountains  with  the  eyes  of  the  city  vacationist: 
she  was  impressed  with  their  wildriess,  their  summer  moods  with 
light  and  shadow,  their  loneliness  and  their  remote  spurs  and 
coves  and  ragged  gaps.  She  saw  them  with  the  picture  sense 
of  the  artist  and  she  described  them  with  a  wealth  of  coloring 
that  reminds  one  of  Ruskin.  In  every  chapter,  often  many  times 
repeated,  gorgeous  paintings  like  these : 

A  subtle  amethystine  mist  had  gradually  overlaid  the  slopes  of  the 
T'  other  Mounting,  mellowing  the  brilliant  tints  of  the  variegated  foli 
age  to  a  delicious  hazy  sheen  of  mosaics;  but  about  the  base  the  air 
seemed  dun-colored,  though  transparent;  seen  through  it,  even  the  red 
of  the  crowded  trees  was  but  a  somber  sort  of  magnificence,  and  the 
great  masses  of  gray  rocks,  jutting  out  among  them  here  and  there, 
wore  a  darkly  frowning  aspect.  Along  the  summit  there  was  a  blaze 
of  scarlet  and  gold  in  the  full  glory  of  the  sunshine ;  the  topmost  cliffs 
caught  its  rays,  and  gave  them  back  in  unexpected  gleams  of  green  or 
grayish-yellow,  as  of  mosses,  or  vines,  or  huckleberry  bushes,  nourished 
in  the  heart  of  the  deep  fissures. 

Mink,  trotting  along  the  red  clay  road,  came  suddenly  upon  the  banki 
of  the  Scolacutta  River,  riotous  with  the  late  floods,  fringed  with  the 
papaw  and  the  ivy  bush.  Beyond  its  steely  glint  he  could  see  the 
sun-flooded  summit  of  Chilhowee,  a  bronze  green,  above  the  interme 
diate  ranges:  behind  him  was  the  Great  Smoky,  all  unfamiliar  viewed 
from  an  unaccustomed  standpoint,  massive,  solemn,  of  dusky  hue ;  white 
and  amber  clouds  were  slowly  settling  on  the  bald.  There  had  been  a 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  311 

shower  among  the  mountains,  and  a  great  rainbow,  showing  now  only 
green  and  rose  and  yellow,  threw  a  splendid  slant  of  translucent  color 
on  the  purple  slope.  In  such  an  environment  the  little  rickety  wooden 
mill — with  its  dilapidated  leaking  race,  with  its  motionless  wheel  moss- 
grown,  with  its  tottering  supports  throbbing  in  the  rush  of  the  water 
which  rose  around  them,  with  a  loitering  dozen  or  more  mountaineers 
about  the  door — might  seem  a  feeble  expression  of  humanity.  To  Mink 
the  scene  was  the  acme  of  excitement  and  interest. 

A  picture  of  summer  it  is  for  the  most  part  painted  lavishly 
with  adjectives,  and  presented  with  impressionistic  rather  than 
realistic  effect.  Every  detail  is  intensified.  The  mountains  of 
eastern  Tennessee  are  only  moderate  ridges,  yet  in  the  Craddock 
tales  they  take  on  the  proportions  of  the  Canadian  Rockies  or  the 
Alps.  The  peak  that  dominates  In  the  Clouds  seems  to  soar  like 
a  Mont  Blanc : 

In  the  semblance  of  the  cumulus-cloud  from  which  it  takes  its  name, 
charged  with  the  portent  of  the  storm,  the  massive  peak  of  Thunder- 
head  towers  preeminent  among  the  summits  of  the  Great  Smoky  Moun 
tains,  unique,  impressive,  most  subtly  significant.  What  strange  at 
traction  of  the  earth  laid  hold  on  this  vagrant  cloud-form1?  What  un 
explained  permanence  of  destiny  solidified  it  and  fixed  it  forever  in 
the  foundations  of  the  range?  Kindred  thunderheads  of  the  air  lift 
above  the  horizon,  lure,  loiter,  lean  on  its  shoulder  with  similitudes  and 
contrasts.  Then  with  all  the  buoyant  liberties  of  cloudage  they  rise — 
rise!  .  .  .  Sometimes  it  was  purple  against  the  azure  heavens;  or  gray 
and  sharp  of  outline  on  faint  green  spaces  of  the  sky;  or  misty,  im 
material,  beset  with  clouds,  as  if  the  clans  had  gathered  to  claim  the 
changeling. 

Always  the  scenery  dominates  the  book.  It  is  significant  that  all 
of  her  early  titles  have  in  them  the  name  of  a  locality, — the  set 
ting  is  the  chief  thing:  Lost  Creek,  Big  Injun  Mounting,  Har 
rison's  Cove,  Chilhowee,  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains,  Broom- 
sedge  Cove,  Keedon  Bluffs.  In  stories  like  The  Mystery  of 
Witch-Face  Mountain  the  background  becomes  supreme:  the 
human  element  seems  to  have  been  added  afterwards  by  a  sort 
of  necessity;  the  central  character  is  the  great  witch-face  on 
the  mountain. 

It  reminds  one  of  Hardy,  and  then  one  remembers  that  when 
"The  Dancin'  Party  at  Harrison's  Cove"  appeared  in  the 
Atlantic,  The  Return  of  the  Native  had  for  three  months  been 
running  as  a  serial  in  Harper's  Monthly,  and  that,  somewhat 
later,  In  the  "Stranger-People's"  Country  and  Wessex  Folk  ran 


312  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

for  months  parallel  in  the  same  magazine.  It  is  impossible  not 
to  think  of  Hardy  as  one  reads  Where  the  Battle  Was  Fought, 
1884.  The  battle-field  dominates  the  book  as  completely  as  does 
Egckm  Heath  The  Return  of  the  Native,  and  it  dominates  it  in 
the  same  symbolic  way : 

By  wintry  daylight  the  battle-field  is  still  more  ghastly.  Gray  with 
the  pallid  crab-grass  which  so  eagerly  usurps  the  place  of  the  last  sum 
mer's  crops,  it  stretches  out  on  every  side  to  meet  the  bending  sky. 
The  armies  that  successively  encamped  upon  it  did  not  leave  a  tree  for 
miles,  but  here  and  there  thickets  have  sprung  up  since  the  war,  and 
bare  and  black  they  intensify  the  gloom  of  the  landscape.  The  turf  in 
these  segregated  spots  is  never  turned*  Beneath  the  branches  are  rows 
of  empty,  yawning  graves,  where  the  bodies  of  soldiers  were  temporarily 
buried.  Here,  most  often,  their  spirits  walk,  and  no  hire  can  induce 
the  hardiest  plowman  to  break  the  ground.  Thus  the  owner  of  the  land 
is  fain  to  concede  these  acres  to  his  ghostly  tenants,  who  pay  no  rent. 
A  great  brick  house,  dismantled  and  desolate,  rises  starkly  above  the  dis 
mantled  desolation  of  the  plain. 

The  title  of  the  book—  Where  the  Battle  Was  Fought— makes  the 
battle-field  central  in  the  tragedy,  and  so  it  is  with  the  short 
stories  "  'Way  Down  in  Lonesome  Cove"  and  "Drifting  Down 
Lost  Creek. ' '  Nature  is  always  cognizant  of  the  human  tragedy 
enacted  before  it  and  always  makes  itself  felt.  In  The  Juggler, 
Tubal  Cain  Sims  believes  that  murder  has  been  done: 

"He  sighed  an'  groaned  like  suthin'  in  agony.  An'  then  he  says,  so 
painful,  'But  the  one  who  lives — oh,  what  can  I  do — the  one  who 
lives !' "  He  paused  abruptly  to  mark  the  petrified  astonishment  on 
the  group  of  faces  growing  white  in  the  closing  dusk. 

An  owl  began  to  hoot  in  the  bosky  recesses  far  up  the  slope.  At  the 
sound,  carrying  far  in  the  twilight  stillness,  a  hound  bayed  from 
the  door  of  the  little  cabin  in  the  Cove,  by  the  river.  A  light,  stellular 
in  the  gloom  that  hung  about  the  lower  levels,  suddenly  sprung  up  in, 
the  window.  A  tremulous  elongated  reflection  shimmered  in  the  shal 
lows. 

But  such  effects  in  her  work  are  fitful :  one  feels  them  strongly 
at  times,  then  forgets  them  in  the  long  stretches  of  dialect  con 
versation  and  description  seemingly  introduced  for  its  own  sake. 
Of  the  art  that  could  make  of  Egdon  Heath  a  constantly  felt, 
implacable,  malignant  presence  that  harried  and  compelled  its 
dwellers  until  the  reader  at  last  must  shake  himself  awake  as 
from  a  nightmare,  of  this  she  knew  little.  She  worked  by  means 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  313 

of  brilliant  sketches;  she  relied  upon  her  picturing  power  to 
carry  the  story,  and  as  a  result  the  effect  is  scattered. 

In  her  characterization  she  had  all  the  defects  of  Scott:  she 
worked  largely  with  externals.  She  had  an  eye  for  groups  posed 
artistically  against  a  picturesque  background  as  in  that  mar 
velous  opening  picture  in  "  'Way  Down  on  Lonesome  Cove." 
She  expended  the  greatest  of  care  on  costume,  features,  habits 
of  carriage  and  posture,  tricks  of  expression,  individual  oddities, 
but  she  seldom  went  deeper.  We  see  her  characters  distinctly; 
not  often  do  we  feel  them.  In  her  major  personages,  like  the 
Prophet,  the  Despot,  the  Juggler,  we  have  little  sympathetic  in 
terest,  and  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  they  were  much  more 
than  picturesque  specimens  even  to  the  author  herself.  To  get 
upon  the  heart  of  the  reader  a  character  must  first  have  been 
upon  the  heart  of  his  creator.  Here  and  there  undoubtedly  she 
did  feel  the  thrill  of  comprehension  as  she  created,  a  few  times 
so  keenly  indeed  that  she  could  forget  her  art,  her  note  book, 
and  her  audience.  The  one  thing  that  seems  to  have  touched 
her  heart  as  she  journeyed  through  the  summer  valleys  and  into 
the  remote  coves  seems  to  have  been  the  pitiful  loneliness  and 
heart-hungev  of  the  women.  Could  she  have  done  for  all  of 
her  characters  what  she  did  for  Celia  Shaw  and  Madeline  and 
Dorinda  and  a  few  other  feminine  souls,  the  final  verdict  upon 
her  work  might  have  been  far  different  from  what  it  must  be  now. 

Her  stories  necessarily  are  woven  from  scanty  materials.  In 
the  tale  of  a  scattered  and  primitive  mountain  community  there 
can  be  little  complication  of  plot.  The  movement  of  the  story 
must  be  slow,  as  slow  indeed  as  the  round  of  life  in  the  coves 
and  the  lonesome  valleys.  But  in  her  long-drawn  narratives 
often  there  is  no  movement  at  all.  She  elaborates  details  with 
tediousness  and  records  interminable  conversations,  and  breaks 
the  thread  to  insert  whole  chapters  of  description,  as  in  Chapter 
VI  of  The  Juggler,  which  records  the  doings  at  a  mountain  re 
vival  meeting  seemingly  for  the  mere  sake  of  the  local  color. 
Nearly  all  of  her  longer  novels  lack  in  constructive  power.  Like 
Harte,  whom  in  so  many  ways  she  resembled,  she  could  deal 
strongly  with  picturesque  moments  and  people,  but  she  lacked 
the  ability  to  trace  the  growth  of  character  or  the  slow  trans 
forming  power  of  a  passion  or  an  ideal  or  a  sin. 

Her  style  was  peculiarly  her  own ;  in  this  she  was  strong.     It  is 


314  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

worthy  of  note  that  in  an  age  rendered  styleless  by  the  news 
paper  and  the  public  school  she  was  able  to  be  individual  to  the 
.\tcnt  that  one  may  identify  any  page  of  her  writings  by  the 
style  alone.  It  is  not  always  admirable:  there  is  a  Southern 
florid  ness  about  it,  a  fondness  for  stately  epithet  that  one  does 
not  find  in  Harris  or  in  others  of  the  Georgia  group.  She  can 
write  that  the  search  light  made  "a  rayonnant  halo  in  the  dim 
glooms  of  the  riparian  midnight,'*  and  she  can  follow  the  jocose 
observation  of  a  woman  washing  dishes  with  this  tremendous 
sentence:  "  'What  fur?'  demanded  the  lord  of  the  house,  whose 
sense  of  humor  was  too  blunted  by  his  speculations,  and  a  haunt 
ing  anxiety,  and  a  troublous  eagerness  to  discuss  the  question  of 
his  discovery,  to  perceive  aught  of  the  ludicrous  in  the  lightsome 
metaphor  with  which  his  weighty  spouse  had  characterized  her 
dissatisfaction  with  the  ordering  of  events. ' '  It  may  be  interest 
ing  to  know  that  the  woman  vouchsafed  no  reply.  Rather,  "she 
wheezed  one  more  line  of  her  matutinal  hymn  in  a  dolorous 
cadence  and  with  breathy  interstices  between  the  spondees." 

She  is  at  her  best  when  describing  some  lonely  valley  among 
the  ridges,  or  the  moonlight  as  it  plays  fitfully  over  some  scene 
of  mountain  lawlessness,  or  some  remote  cabin  "deep  among  the 
wooded  spurs."  In  such  work  she  creates  an  atmosphere  all  her 
own.  Few  other  writers  have  so  made  landscape  felt.  One  may 
choose  illustrations  almost  at  random: 

On  a  certain  steep  and  savage  slope  of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains, 
the  primeval  wilderness  for  many  miles  is  unbroken  save  for  one  meager 
clearing. 

Deep  among  the  wooded  spurs  Lonesome  Cove  nestles,  sequestered 
from  the  world.  Naught  emigrates  from  thence  except  an  importunate 
stream  that  forces  its  way  through  a  rocky  gap,  and  so  to  freedom  be 
yond.  No  stranger  intrudes;  only  the  moon  looks  in  once  in  a  while. 
The  roaring  wind  may  explore  its  solitudes;  and  it  is  but  the  vertical 
sun  that  strikes  to  the  heart  of  the  little  basin,  because  of  the  massive 
mountains  that  wall  it  round  and  serve  to  isolate  it. 

The  night  wind  rose.  The  stars  all  seemed  to  have  burst  from  tln-ir 
moorings  and  were  wildly  adrift  in  the  sky.  There  was  a  broken 
tumult  of  billowy  clouds,  and  the  moon  tossed  hopelessly  among-  them, 
a  lunar  wreck,  sometimes  on  her  beam  ends,  sometimes  half  submerged, 
once  more  gallantly  struggling  to  the  surface,  and  ap^ain  sunk.  The 
bare  boughs  of  the  trees  beat  tog-ether  in  a  dirgelike  monotone. 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  315 

Nowhere  is  she  commonplace;  nowhere  does  she  come  down 
from  the  stately  plane  that  she  reaches  always  with  her  opening 
paragraph.  Even  her  dialect  is  individual.  Doubtless  other 
writers  have  handled  the  mountain  speech  more  correctly,  doubt 
less  there  is  as  much  of  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  in  the  curious 
forms  and  perversions  as  there  is  of  the  Tennessee  mountaineers, 
yet  no  one  has  ever  used  dialect  more  convincingly  than  she  or 
more  effectively.  She  has  made  it  a  part  of  her  style. 

The  story  of  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  is  a  story  of  gradual 
decline.  In  the  Tennessee  Mountains  was  received  with  a  uni 
versality  of  approval  comparable  only  with  that  accorded  to 
The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp.  In  her  second  venture,  Where 
the  Battle  Was  Fought,  she  attempted  to  break  from  the  narrow 
limits  of  her  first  success  and  to  write  a  Hardy -like  novel  of  the 
section  of  Southern  life  in  which  she  herself  belonged,  but  it 
failed.  From  all  sides  came  the  demand  that  she  return  again 
to  her  own  peculiar  domain.  And  she  returned  with  The  Prophet 
of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains.  It  was  praised,  but  with  the 
praise  came  a  note  of  dissatisfaction,  a  note  that  became  more 
and  more  dominant  with  every  novel  that  followed.  Her  first 
short  stories  had  appealed  because  of  their  freshness  and  the 
strangeness  of  their  setting.  Moreover,  since  they  were  the  first 
work  of  a  young  writer  they  were  a  promise  of  better  things  to 
come.  But  the  promise  was  not  fulfilled.  After  The  Juggler, 
her  last  attempt  on  a  large  scale  to  create  a  great  Tennessee- 
mountains  novel,  she  took  the  advice  of  many  of  her  critics  and 
left  the  narrow  field  that  she  had  cultivated  so  carefully.  She 
wrote  historical  romances  and  novels  of  contemporary  life,  but 
the  freshness  of  her  early  work  was  gone.  After  1897  she 
produced  nothing  that  had  not  been  done  better  by  other 
writers. 

Her  failure  came  not,  as  many  have  believed,  from  the  pov 
erty  of  her  materials  and  the  narrowness  of  her  field.  Thomas 
Hardy  deliberately  had  chosen  for  his  novels  a  region  and  a 
people  just  as  primitive.  A  great  novel  should  concern  itself 
with  the  common  fundamentals  of  humanity,  and  these  funda 
mentals,  he  believed,  may  be  studied  with  more  of  accuracy  in 
the  isolated  places  where  the  conventions  of  polite  society  have 
not  prevented  natural  expression.  Or,  to  quote  Hardy's  own 
words : 


316  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Social  environment  operates  upon  character  in  a  way  that  is  oftener 
than  not  prejudicial  to  vigorous  portraiture  by  making  the  exteriors  of 
men  their  screen  rather  than  their  index,  as  with  untutored  mankind. 
Contrasts  are  disguised  by  the  crust  of  conventionality,  picturesqueness 
obliterated,  and  a  subjective  system  of  description  necessitated  for  the 
differentiation  of  character.  In  the  one  case  the  author's  word  has  to 
be  taken  as  to  the  nerves  and  muscles  of  his  figures;  in  the  other  they 
can  be  seen  as  in  an  ecorche.7 

The  failure  of  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  came  rather  from 
her  inability  to  work  with  large  masses  of  material  and  coordinate 
it  and  shape  it  into  a  culminating  force.  She  was  picturesque 
rather  than  penetrating,  melodramatic  rather  than  simple,  a 
showman  rather  than  a  discerning  interpreter  of  the  inner  mean 
ings  of  life.  She  could  make  vivid  sketches  of  a  moment  or  of 
a  group  or  a  landscape,  but  she  could  not  build  up  touch  by 
touch  a  consistent  and  compelling  human  character.  Her  genius 
was  fitted  to  express  itself  in  the  short  story  and  the  sketch,  and 
she  devoted  the  golden  years  of  her  productive  life  to  the  making 
of  elaborate  novels.  A  little  story  like  "  'Way  Down  on  Lone 
some  Cove"  is  worth  the  whole  of  the  The  Juggler  or  In  the 
Clouds.  The  short  stories  with  which  she  won  her  first  fame 
must  stand  as  her  highest  achievement. 


VII 

Later  members  of  the  Georgia  group,  Sarah  Barnwell  Elliott, 
Harry  Stillwell  Edwards,  and  William  Nathaniel  Harben,  have 
continued  the  tradition  of  Longstreet  and  have  dealt  more  or 
less  realistically  with  the  humbler  life  of  their  region.  Miss 
Elliott  with  her  The  Durket  Sperrit  entered  the  domain  of 
Charles  Egbert  Craddock  and  gave  a  new  version  of  the  moun 
tain  dialect.  A  comparison  of  this  novel  with  The  Juggler, 
which  appeared  the  same  year,  is  illuminating.  The  two  writers 
seem  to  be  complements  of  each  other,  the  one  strong  where  the 
other  is  weak.  The  story  lacks  the  atmosphere,  the  poetic  dig 
nity,  the  sense  of  mystery  and  of  mountain  majesty  so  notable 
in  the  elder  novelist,  but  it  surpasses  her  in  characterization  and 
in  sympathy.  The  people  are  tremendously  alive.  The  tyran 
nical  old  woman  about  whom  the  tale  centers,  with  her  narrow 
ideals  and  her  haughty  "Durket  sperrit,"  dominates  every  page 

i  The  Forum,  1888. 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  317 

as  Egdon  Heath  dominates  The  Return  of  the  Native.  She  is 
felt  during  every  moment  of  the  story  and  so  is  the  pathetic 
little  mountain  waif  in  the  earlier  chapters  of  Jerry.  Miss 
Elliott's  distinctive  work  is  limited  to  these  two  books.  Had 
she  had  the  courage  to  work  out  with  clearness  the  central 
tragedy  of  The  Durket  Sperrit,  the  deliberate  disgracing  of 
Hannah  by  her  discarded  lover,  the  book  might  take  its  place 
among  the  few  great  novels  of  the  period. 

Edwards  inclined  more  toward  the  old  Georgia  type  of  hu 
man-nature  sketch.  His  best  work  is  to  be  found  in  his  short 
studies  in  black  and  white  after  the  Johnston  pattern.  Indeed, 
his  first  story,  " Elder  Brown's  Backslide,"  Harper's  Monthly, 
1885,  without  his  name  would  have  been  regarded  as  a  Dukes- 
borough  Tale.  He  has  written  two  novels,  one  of  which,  Sons  and 
Fathers,  was  awarded  the  $10,000  prize  offered  by  the  Chicago 
Record  for  a  mystery  story,  but  he  is  not  a  novelist.  He  is  hu 
morous  and  picturesque  and  often  he  is  for  a  moment  the  master 
of  pathos,  but  he  has  added  nothing  new  and  nothing  command- 
ingly  distinctive. 

VIII 

Constance  Fenimore  Woolson's  Rodman  the  Keeper,  1880,  un 
doubtedly  was  a  strong  force  in  the  new  Southern  revival.  Dur 
ing  the  eighties  Miss  Woolson  was  regarded  as  the  most  prom 
ising  of  the  younger  writers.  She  was  a  grand  niece  of  Cooper, 
a  fact  made  much  of,  and  she  had  written  short  stories  of  unusual 
brilliance,  her  collection,  Castle  Nowhere,  indeed,  ranking  as  a 
pioneer  book  in  a  new  field.  Again  was  she  destined  to  be  a 
pioneer.  In  1873  the  frail  health  of  her  mother  sent  her  into 
the  South  and  for  six  years  she  made  her  home  in  Florida,  spend 
ing  her  summers  in  the  mountains  of  North  Carolina,  Virginia, 
South  Carolina,  and  Georgia.  During  the  rest  of  her  life  her 
stories  were  studies  of  Southern  life  and  Southern  conditions. 
Only  Anne  of  her  novels  and  two  late  collections  of  Italian  tales 
may  be  noted  as  exceptions. 

It  was  in  Rodman  the  Keeper,  a  collection  of  her  magazine 
stories  of  the  late  seventies,  that  the  North  found  its  first  ade 
quate  picture  of  the  territory  over  which  had  been  fought  the 
Civil  War.  The  Tourgee  novels,  which  had  created  a  real  sensa- 


318  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

tion,  were  political  documents,  but  here  were  studies  carefully 
wrought  by  one  who  did  not  take  sides.  It  showed  the  desola 
tion  wrought  by  the  armies  during  the  four  years,  the  pathos  of 
broken  homes  and  ruined  ^plantations,  the  rankling  bitterness, 
especially  in  the  hearts  of  women,  the  helpless  pride  of  the  sur 
vivors,  and  the  curious  differences  between  the  Northern  and 
the  Southern  temperaments.  It  was  careful  work.  Contem 
porary  opinion  seemed  to  be  voiced  by  the  Boston  Literary 
World:  The  stories  "more  thoroughly  represent  the  South  than 
anything  of  the  kind  that  has  been  written  since  the  war." 

Necessarily  the  standpoint  was  that  of  an  observer  from  with 
out  There  was  no  dialect  in  the  tales,  there  were  no  revealings 
of  the  heart  of  Southern  life  as  in  Harris  and  Page  and  the  others 
who  had  arisen  from  the  material  they  used,  but  there  was  beauty 
and  pathos  and  a  careful  realism  that  carried  conviction.  A 
sketch  like  "Felipe,"  for  example,  is  a  prose  idyl,  "Up  the  Blue 
Ridge ' '  is  the  Craddock  region  seen  with  Northern  eyes,  and  the 
story  that  gives  the  title  to  the  book  catches  the  spirit  of  the  de 
feated  South  as  few  writers  not  Southern  born  have  ever  done. 

For  a  time  Miss  Woolson  held  a  commanding  place  among 
the  novelists  of  the  period.  After  her  untimely  death  in  1894 
Stedman  wrote  that  she  "was  one  of  the  leading  women  in  the 
American  literature  of  the  century,"  and  again,  "No  woman 
of  rarer  personal  qualities,  or  with  more  decided  gifts  as  a 
novelist,  figured  in  her  own  generation  of  American  writers." 
But  time  has  not  sustained  this  contemporary  verdict.  Her  am 
bitious  novel  Anne,  over  which  she  toiled  for  three  years,  brilliant 
as  it  may  be  in  parts,  has  not  held  its  place.  And  her  short 
stories,  rare  though  they  may  have  been  in  the  day  of  their  new 
ness,  are  not  to  be  compared  with  the  perfect  art  of  such  later 
writers  as  Miss  King  and  Mrs.  Chopin.  She  must  take  her  place 
as  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  period  who  discovered  a  field  and 
prepared  an  audience  for  writers  who  were  to  follow. 


IX 

The  appearance  of  Page's  In  Ole  Virginia,  1887,  marks  the 
culmination  of  the  period  of  Southern  themes.  The  sensation 
caused  by  The  Quick  or  the  Dead?  by  Amelie  Rives  (later 
Princess  Troubetzkoy)  in  1888  need  only  be  referred  to.  It  had 


SOUTHERN  THEMES  AND  WRITERS  319 

little  significance  either  local  or  otherwise.  The  younger  writers, 
born  for  the  most  part  at  a  later  date,  like  John  Fox,  Jr.,  Mary 
Johnston,  and  Ellen  Glasgow,  belong  to  another  period. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

RICHARD  MALCOLM  JOHNSTON.  (1822-1898.)  The  English  Classics, 
1860;  Georgia  Sketches,  by  an  Old  Man,  1864;  Dukesborough  Tales,  1871, 
1874,  1883,  1892;  English  Literature  (with  William  Hand  Browne),  1872;' 
Life  of  Alexander  H.  Stephens  (with  William  Hand  Browne),  1878;  Old 
Mark  Langston,  a  Tale  of  Duke's  Creek,  1883;  Mr.  Absalom  Billingslea 
and  Other  Georgia  Folk,  1888;  Ogeechee  Cross  Firings,  1889;  The  Primes 
and  Their  Neighbors,  1891;  Studies  Literary  and  Scientific,  1891;  Mr. 
Billy  Downs  and  His  Likes,  1892;  Mr.  Partner's  Marital  Claims  and 
Other  Stories,  1892;  Two  Gray  Tourists,  1893;  Widow  Guthrie,  1893; 
Little  Ike  Templin  and  Other  Stories,  1894;  Old  Times  in  Middle  Georgia, 
1897;  Pearce  Amerson's  Will,  1898. 

(  JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS.  (1848-1908.)]  Uncle  Remus,  His  Songs  and  His 
Sayings,  1880;  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus,  Myths  and  Legends  of  the  Old 
Plantation,  1883;  Mingo  and  Other  Sketches  in  Black  and  White,  1884; 
Story  of  Aaron,  1885;  Free  Joe  and  Other  Georgian  Sketches,  1887;  Daddy 
Jake  the  Runaway,  and  Short  Stories  Told  After  Dark,  1889;  Balaam  and 
His  Master,  and  Other  Sketches  and  Stories,  1891;  On  the  Plantation,  a 
Story  of  a  Georgia  Boy's  Adventures  During  the  War,  1892;  Uncle  Remus 
and  His  Friends,  1892;  Little  Mr.  Thimblefinger  and  His  Queer  Country, 
1894;  Mr.  Rabbit  at  Home,  1895;  Sister  Jane,  Her  Friends  and  Acquaint 
ances,  1896;  Georgia  from  the  Invasion  of  De  Soto  to  Recent  Times,  1896; 
Stories  of  Georgia,  1896;  Aaron  in  the  Wildwoods,  1897;  Tales  of  the 
Home  Folks  in  Peace  and  War,  1898;  Chronicles  of  Aunt  Minerva  Ann, 
1899;  Plantation  Pageants,  1899;  On  the  Wing  of  Occasions,  1900; 
Gabriel  Tolliver,  a  Story  of  Reconstruction,  1902;  Making  of  a  Statesman, 
and  Other  Stories,  1902;  Wally  Wanderoon,  1903;  Little  Union  Scout, 
1904;  Tar  Baby  and  Other  Rimes  of  Uncle  Remus,  1904;  Told  by  Uncle 
Remus;  New  Stories  of  the  Old  Plantation,  1905. 

CONSTANCE  FENIMORE  WOOLSON.  (1840-1894.)  The  Old  Stone  House, 
1873;  Castle  Nowhere,  1875;  Lake-Country  Sketches,  1875;  Rodman  the 
Keeper,  1880;  Anne,  1882;  East  Angels,  1886;  Jupiter  Lights,  1889; 
Horace  Chase,  a  Novel,  1894;  The  Front  Yard  and  Other  Italian  Stories, 
1895;  Dorothy,  and  Other  Italian  Stories,  1896;  Mentone,  Cairo,  and 
Corfu,  1896. 

CHARLES  EGBERT  CRADDOCK.  (1850 .)  In  the  Tennessee  Moun 
tains,  1884;  Where  the  Battle  Was  Fought,  1885;  Down  the  Ravine,  1885; 
The  Prophet  of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains,  1885;  In  the  Clouds,  1886; 
The  Story  of  Keedon  Bluffs,  1887;  The  Despot  of  Broomsedge  Cove,  1888; 
In  the  ''Stranger  People's"  Country,  1891;  His  Vanished  Star,  1894;  The 
Phantoms  of  the  Footbridge,  1895;  The  Mystery  of  Witchface  Mountain, 
1895;  The  Juggler,  1897;  The  Young  Mountaineers,  1897;  The  Story  of 


320  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Old  Fort  Louden,  1899;  The  Bushwhackers  and  Other  Stories,  1899;  The 
Champion,  1902;  A  Specter  of  Power,  1903;  Storm  Center,  1905;  The 
Frontiersman,  1905;  The  Amulet,  1906;  The  Windfall,  1907;  The  Fair 
M  ississippian,  1908;  Ordeal — A  Mountain  Story  of  Tennessee,  1912;  Raid 
of  the  Guerrilla,  1912;  The  Story  of  Duciehurst,  1914. 

SABAH  BARNWELL  ELLIOTT.  The  Felmeres,  1880;  A  Simple  Heart, 
1886;  Jerry,  1890;  John  Paget,  1893;  The  Durket  Sperret,  1897;  An  In 
cident  and  Other  Happenings,  1899;  Sam  Houston,  1900;  The  Making  of 
Jane,  1901;  His  Majesty's  Service  and  Other  Plays. 

HARRY  STILLWELL  EDWARDS.  (1855 .)  Two  Runaways  and  Other 

Stories,  1889;  Sons  and  Fathers,  1896;  The  Marbeau  Cousins,  1898;  His 
Defense,  and  Other  Stories,  1898. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   LATER   POETS 

Although,  prose  forms,  especially  the  novel  and  the  short 
sfcory,  dominated  the  period,  yet  the  amount  of  poetry  published 
from  1860  to  1899  surpasses,  in  mere  bulk  at  least,  all  that  had 
been  produced  in  America  before  that  date.  In  quality  also  it 
is  notable.  Stedman's  An  American  Anthology  has  773  pages 
of  selections,  and  of  this  space  462  pages,  or  almost  two-thirds, 
are  given  to  the  poets  who  made  their  first  appearance  during 
these  forty  years.  Very  many  whom  he  mentions  were  only  in 
cidentally  poets.  A  surprising  number  of  those  who  are  known 
to-day  only  as  novelists  or  short  story  writers  began  their  career 
with  a  volume  and  in  some  cases  with  several  volumes  of  verse. 
Few  indeed  have  been  the  writers  who  have  not  contributed 
poetical  material.  Among  the  poets  are  to  be  numbered  writers 
as  inseparably  connected  with  prose  as  Thoreau,  Burroughs, 
Howells,  Mrs.  Stuart  Phelps  Ward,  S.  Weir  Mitchell,  Miss 
Woolsou,  Lew  Wallace,  Mrs.  Wilkins  Freeman,  Harris,  Page,  Mrs. 
Cooke,  Ambrose  Bierce,  Alice  Brown,  Hamlin  Garland,  and  A.  S. 
Hardy. 

Those  who  may  be  counted  as  the  distinctive  poets  of  the  era, 
the  third  generation  of  poets  in  America,  make  not  a  long  list 
if  only  those  be  taken  who  have  done  new  and  distinctive  work. 
Not  many  names  need  be  added  to  the  following  twenty-five  whose 
first  significant  collections  were  published  during  the  twenty 
years  following  1870: 

1870.  Bret  Harte.    Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James. 

1871.  John  Hay.     Pike  County  Ballads. 
1871.     Joaquin  Miller.     Songs  of  the  Sierras. 

1871.  Will  Carleton.     Poems. 

1872.  Celia  Thaxter.     Poems. 

1873.  John  Boyle  O'Reilly.     Songs  of  the  Southern  Seas. 
1875.  Richard  Watson  Gilder.     The  New  Day. 

1877.     Sidney  Lanier.     Poems. 

321 


322  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

1881.  Ina  Coolbrith.    A  Perfect  Day  and  Other  Poems. 

1882.  John  Bannister  Tabb.     Poems. 

1883.  James  Whitcorab  Riley.     The  Old  Swimmin'-Hole. 

1883.  George  Edward  Woodberry.     The  North  Shore  Watch. 

1884.  Edith  M.  Thomas.    A  New  Year's  Masque. 
1884.  Henry  Cuyler  Bunner.    Airs  from  Arcady. 
1884.  Louise  Imogen  Guiney.     Songs  at  the  Start. 

1886.  Clinton  Scollard.     With  Reed  and  Lyre. 
.   1887.     Eugene  Field.     Culture's  Garland. 

1887.  Madison  Cawein.     Blooms  of  the  Berry. 

1887.  Robert  Burns  Wilson.     Life  and  Love. 

1888.  Irwin  Russell.     Dialect  Poems. 

1889.  Richard  Hovey.     The  Laurel:  an  Ode. 

John  James  Piatt,  Emma  Lazarus,  Emily  Dickinson,  and  E.  R 
Sill,  whose  first  volumes  fall  outside  of  the  twenty-years  period, 
complete  the  number. 


For  the  greater  part  these  later  poets  were  children  of  the  new 
era  who  with  Whitman  voiced  their  own  hearts  and  looked  at  the 
life  close  about  them  with  their  own  eyes.  The  more  individual 
of  them,  the  leading  innovators  who  most  impressed  themselves 
upon  their  times — Whitman,  Hay  and  Harte,  Miller,  Lanier  and 
Russell — we  have  already  considered.  They  rose  above  con 
ventions  and  rules  and  looked  only  at  life;  they  stood  for  the 
new  Americanism  of  the  period,  and  they  had  the  courage  that 
dared  in  a  critical  and  fastidious  age  to  break  away  into  what 
seemed  like  crude  and  unpoetic  regions.  Not  many  of  them  could 
go  to  the  extremes  of  Whitman,  or  even  of  Harte  and  Hay.  Some 
would  voice  the  new  message  of  the  times  in  the  old  key  and  the 
old  forms ;  others  would  adopt  the  new  fashions  but  change  not  at 
all  the  old  themes  and  the  old  sentiments. 

Of  the  latter  class  Will  Carleton  perhaps  is  the  typical  repre- 
<>» -illative.  By  birth  and  training  he  belonged  to  the  Western 
roup  of  innovators  represented  by  Mark  Twain  and  Eggleston 
and  Miller.  He  had  been  born  in  a  log  cabin  in  Michigan  and 
ic  had  spent  all  of  his  boyhood  on  a  small,  secluded  farm.  He 
lad  broken  from  his  environment  at  twenty,  had  gained  a  college 
degree,  and  following  the  lead  of  his  inclination  had  become  a 


THE  LATER  POETS  323 

journalist,  first  in  Detroit,  then  in  Chicago,  Boston,  and  New 
York.  From  journalism,  especially  in  the  seventies,  it  was  but  a 
step  to  literature.  He  would  be  a  poet,  and  led  by  the  spirit  of 
his  period  he  turned  for  material  to  the  homely  life  of  his  boy 
hood.  He  would  make  no  realistic  picture — no  man  was  ever  less 
fitted  than  he  to  reproduce  the  external  features  of  a  scene  or  a 
region — he  would  touch  the  sentiments  and  the  emotions.  1 1  Bet 
sey  and  I  Are  Out/'  published  in  the  Toledo  Blade  in  1871,  was 
the  beginning.  Then  in  1873  came  Farm  Ballads,  with  such  pop 
ular  favorites  as  "Over  the  Hills  to  the  Poor-House"  and  "Gone 
with  a  Handsomer  Man,"  a  thin  book  that  sold  forty  thousand 
copies  in  eighteen  months.  No  poet  since  Longfellow  had  so  ap 
pealed  to  the  common  people.  At  his  death  in  1912  there  had 
been  sold  of  his  various  collections  more  than  six  hundred  thou 
sand  copies. 

His  poetry  as  we  read  it  to-day  has  in  it  little  of  distinction; 
it  is  crude,  for  the  most  part,  and  conventional.  It  made  its  ap 
peal  largely  because  of  its  kindly  sympathy,  its  homeliness,  and 
its  lavish  sentiment.  The  poet  played  upon  the  chords  of  memory 
and  home  and  childhood,  the  message  of  the  earlier  Longfellow 
cast  into  a  heavily  stressed  and  swinging  melody  that  found  a 
prepared  audience.  With  E.  P.  Roe,  his  counterpart  in  prose, 
Will  Carleton  is  largely  responsible  for  prolonging  the  age  of 
sentiment. 

A  singer  of  a  different  type  was  John  James  Piatt,  born  in 
Indiana  in  1835  and  joint  author  with  W.  D.  Howells  of  Poems  of 
Two  Friends,  1859.  He  was  a  classicist  who  caught  the  new 
vision  and  sought  to  compromise.  Everywhere  in  his  work  a 
blending  of  the  new  and  the  old :  the  Western  spirit  that  would 
voice  the  new  notes  of  the  Wabash  rather  than  echo  the  old  music 
of  the  Thames,  that  syren  melody  that  had  been  the  undoing  of 
Taylor  and  Stoddard.  In  an  early  review  of  Stedman,  Piatt 
had  found,  as  he  characteristically  termed  it,  "a  too  frequent  be 
trayal  of  Tennyson 's  floating  musk  in  his  singing-garments, ' '  and 
he  had  noted  as  his  chief  strength  that  "his  representative  sub 
jects  are  American."  x  In  making  the  criticism  he  touched  upon 
his  own  weakness  and  his  own  strength.  In  all  his  volumes  con 
ventional  work  like  "Rose  and  Root,"  "The  Sunshine  of 
Shadows,"  and  "The  Unheard"  alternates  with  more  original 

i  Atlantic  Monthly,  41:313. 


324  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

poems,  native  in  theme  and  to  a  degree  native  in  spirit,  like  "The 
Mower  in  Ohio,"  "The  Pioneer's  Chimney,"  "Fires  in  Illinois," 
and  "Riding  to  Vote."  There  is  no  dialect,  no  straining  for 
realistic  effect,  no  sentimentality.  In  all  that  makes  for  art  the 
poems  have  little  for  criticism:  they  are  classical  and  finished 
and  beautiful.  But  they  lack  life.  There  is  nothing  about  them 
that  grips  the  reader's  heart,  nothing  that  fixes  itself  in  the 
memory,  no  single  line  that  has  distinction  of  phrase.  Even  in 
the  Western  poems  like  "The  Mower  in  Ohio"  there  is  no  sharp 
ness,  no  atmosphere,  no  feeling  of  reality.  It  is  art  rather  than 
life ;  it  is  a  conscious  effort  to  make  a  poem.  The  case  is  typical. 
With  the  criticism  one  may  sweep  away  once  for  all  great  areas 
of  the  poetry  of  the  time. 

Far  stronger  are  the  vigorous  lyrics  of  Maurice  Thompson, 
whose  work  is  to  be  found  in  so  many  literary  fields  of  the  period. 
His  poetry,  small  in  quantity,  has  a  spirit  of  its  own  that  is  dis 
tinctive.  It  is  tonic  with  the  out-of-doors  and  it  is  masculine. 
One  stanza  from  the  poem  "At  Lincoln's  Grave,"  delivered  be 
fore  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  at  Harvard  in  1893,  voices  the  new 
Western  soul: 

His  humor,  born  of  virile  opulence, 

Stung  like  a  pungent  sap  or  wild-fruit  zest, 

And  satisfied  a  universal  sense 

Of  manliness,  the  strongest  and  the  best; 

A  soft  Kentucky  strain  was  in  his  voice, 

And  the  Ohio's  deeper  boom  was  there, 

With  some  wild  accents  of  old  Wabash  days, 

And  winds  of  Illinois; 
And  when  he  spoke  he  took  us  unaware, 
With  his  high  courage  and  unselfish  ways. 

II 

The  successor  of  Carleton  is  James  Whitcomb  Riley  of  In 
diana,  the  leading  producer  during  the  later  period  of  platforn 
and  newspaper  balladry.  The  early  life  of  Riley  was  urban 
rather  than  rural.  His  father  was  a  lawyer  at  Greenfield,  a 
typical  Western  county  seat,  and  after  sending  the  boy  to  the  vil 
lage  school  he  sought  to  turn  him  to  his  own  profession.  But 
there  was  a  stratum  of  the  wayward  and  the  unconventional  in 
Riley  even  from  the  first.  The  professions  and  the  ordinary  oc- 


THE  LATER  POETS  325 

cupations  open  to  youth  did  not  appeal  to  the  imaginative  lad. 
He  learned  the  trade  of  sign-painting  and  then  for  a  year 
traveled  with  a  patent  medicine  "doctor"  as  advertising  agent. 
Following  this  picturesque  experience  came  three  or  four  years 
as  a  traveling  entertainer  with  a  congenial  troupe,  then  desultory 
newspaper  work,  and  finally,  from  1877  to  1885,  a  steady  posi 
tion  on  the  Indianapolis  Journal.  His  recognition  as  a  poet  came 
in  the  mid  eighties,  and  following  it  came  a  long  period  on  the 
lecture  circuit,  reading  his  own  productions,  at  one  time  working 
in  conjunction  with  Eugene  Field  and  Edgar  W.  Nye, — "Bill 
Nye." 

His  earliest  work  seems  to  have  been  declamatory  and  jour-' 
nalistic  in  origin.  "I  was  always  trying  to  write  of  the  kind  of 
people  I  knew  and  especially  to  write  verse  that  I  could  read  just 
as  if  it  were  being  spoken  for  the  first  time."  And  again,  "I 
always  took  naturally  to  anything  theatrical. ' '  2  For  years  the  • 
newspaper  was  his  only  medium.  He  contributed  to  most  of  the  \ 
Indiana  journals  with  pseudonyms  ranging  all  the  way  from 
"Edyrn"  to  "Jay  Whitt"  and  "Benjamin  F.  Johnson  of 
Boone,"  and  it  was  while  writing  under  the  last  of  these  for 
the  Indianapolis  Journal  that  he  first  became  known  beyond  the 
confines  of  Indiana.  The  device  of  printing  poems  that  osten 
sibly  were  contributed  by  a  crude  farmer  from  a  back  country 
was  not  particularly  original.  Lowell  had  used  it  and  Artemus 
"Ward.  Moreover,  the  fiction  of  accompanying  these  poems  with 
editorial  comment  and  specimen  letters  from  the  author  was  as 
old  at  least  as  The  Biglow  Papers,  but  there  was  a  Western,  Pike 
County  freshness  about  the  Benjamin  F.  Johnson  material.  The 
first  poem  in  the  series,  for  instance,  was  accompanied  by  material 
like  this: 

Mr.  Johnson  thoughtfully  informs  us  that  he  is  "no  edjucated  man," 
but  that  he  has,  "from  childhood  up  tel  old  enugh  to  vote,  allus  wrote 
more  or  less  poetry,  as  many  of  an  albun  in  the  neghborhood  can 
testify."  Again,  he  says  that  he  writes  "from  the  hart  out" ;  and  there 
is  a  touch  of  genuine  pathos  in  the  frank  avowal,  "Thare  is  times  when 
I  write  the  tears  rolls  down  my  cheeks." 

The  poems  that  followed, — "Thoughts  fer  the  Discuraged 
Farmer,"  "When  the  Frost  is  on  the  Punkin,"  "Wortermelon 
Time,"  and  the  others — were  written  primarily  as  humorous 

2  McClure's  Magazine,  2:222. 


326  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

exercises  just  as  Browne  had  written  his  first  Artcmus  Ward  con 
tributions.  There  is  a  histrionic  element  about  them  that  must 
not  be  overlooked.  The  author  is  playing  a  part.  Riley,  we 
know,  had,  at  least  in  his  youth,  very  little  sympathy  with  farm 
life  and  very  little  knowledge  of  it :  he  was  simply  impersonating 
an  ignorant  old  fanner.  The  dialect  does  not  ring  true.  There 
never  has  been  a  time,  for  instance,  when  ' '  ministratin '  "  for 
ministering,  "familiously"  for  familiarly,  '  *  resignated "  for  re 
signed,  and  l '  when  the  army  broke  out ' '  for  when  the  war  broke 
out,  have  been  used  in  Indiana  save  by  those  with  whom  they  are 
individual  peculiarities.  He  is  simply  reporting  the  ignorance  of 
one  old  man  in  the  Artemus  Ward  fashion.  Dialect  with  him 
is  the  record  of  a  town  man's  mimicry  of  country  cmdeness.  It 
is  conventional  rather  than  realistic.  It  is  a  humorous  device 
like  A.  Ward's  cacography.  The  first  Johnson  annotation  will 
illustrate : 

Benj.  F.  Johnson,  of  Boone  County,  who  considers  the  Journal  a 
"very  valubul"  newspaper,  writes  to  inclose  us  an  original  poem,  de 
siring  that  we  kindly  accept  it  for  publication,  as  "many  neghbors 
and  friends  is  astin'  him  to  have  the  same  struck  off." 

He  issued  the  series  at  his  own  expense  in  1883  with  the  title 
The  Old  Swimmin'-Hole  and  'Leven  More  Poems  by  Benj.  F. 
Johnson,  of  Boone,  and  he  continued  the  masquerade  until  after 
the  publication  of  Afterwhiles  in  1887.  After  the  great  vogue  of 
this  later  volume  he  began  to  publish  voluminously  until  his 
final  collected  edition  numbered  fourteen  volumes. 

Riley  not  only  inherited  Will  Carleton's  public  entire,  but  he 
added  to  it  very  considerably.  He  too  dealt  freely  in  sentiment 
and  he  too  wrote  always  with  vocal  interpretation  in  mind.  Un 
doubtedly  the  wide  vogue  of  his  poems  has  come  largely  from 
this  element.  People  have  always  enjoyed  hearing  the  poems 
read  with  an  appropriate  acting  out  of  the  part  more  than  they 
have  enjoyed  reading  them  for  themselves.  The  poems,  more 
over,  appeared  in  what  may  be  called  the  old  homestead  perioa 
in  America.  Denman  Thompson  first  brought  out  his  Joshua 
\\'l>'f<-omb  in  1875  and  his  The  Old  Homestead  in  1886.  Riley 
found  a  public  doubly  prepared.  He  revived  old  memories — 
the  word  "old"  is  almost  a  mannerism  with  him:  "The  Old 
Su  in  ,,n  in  '-Hole, "  "Old  Fashioned  Roses,"  "The  Old  Hay-Mo  w," 
"The  Old  Trundle  Bed,"  "Out  to  Old  Aunt  Mary's,"  "The 


THE  LATER  POETS  327 

Boys  of  the  Old  Glee  Club/'  "An  Old  Sweetheart  of  Mine,"  etc. 
Especially  did  he  appeal  to  those  whose  childhood  had  been 
spent  in  the  country. 

Finally,  he  added  to  Carleton's  devices  a  metrical  facility  and 
a  jigging  melody  that  is  perhaps  his  most  original  contribution 
to  the  period.  More  than  any  one  else  Eiley  is  responsible  for 
the  modern  newspaper  type  of  ballad  that  is  to  poetry  what  rag 
time  is  to  music.  There  is  a  fatal  facility  to  such  a  melody  as, 

Old  wortennelon  time  is  a-comin'  round  again, 

And  there  ain't  no  man  a-livin'  any  tickleder'n  me, 

Fer  the  way  I  hanker  after  wortermelons  is  a  sin — 
Which  is  the  why  and  wharef  ore,  as  you  can  plainly  see. 

Or  this, 

I  ain't,  ner  don't  p'tend  to  be, 
Much  posted  on  philosofy; 
But  thare  is  times,  when  all  alone, 
I  work  out  idees  of  my  own. 
And  of  these  same  thare  is  a  few 
I  'd  like  to  jest  refer  to  you — 
Pervidin'  that  you  don't  object 
To  listen  clos't  and  rickollect. 

In  his  preference  for  native  themes  and  homely,  unliterary 
treatment  of  seemingly  unpoetic  material  he  continued  the  work 
of  the  Pike  County  balladists.  As  the  Nation,  reviewing  his  Old 
Fashioned  Roses,  expressed  it,  he  finds  pleasure  in  ''some  of  the 
coarser  California  flavors. ' '  His  own  standards  for  poetry  he  has 
given  clearly,  and  they  are  in  full  accord  with  the  spirit  of  the 
period : 

The  poems  here  at  home ! — Who  '11  write  'em  down, 
Jes'  as  they  air — in  Country  and  in  Town? — 
Sowed  thick  as  clods  is  'crost  the  fields  and  lanes, 
Er  these-'ere  little  hop-toads  when  it  rains! — 
Who  '11  "voice"  'em  ?  as  I  heerd  a  feller  say 
'At  speechified  on  Freedom,  t'  other  day, 
And  soared  the  Eagle  tel'  it  'peared  to  me, 
She  was  n't  bigger  'n  a  bumblebee ! 

What  We  want,  as  I  sense  it,  in  the  line 
0'  poetry  is  somepin'  Yours  and  Mine — 
Somepin'  with  live-stock  in  it,  and  outdoors, 
And  old  crick-bottoms,  snags,  and  sycamores : 
Putt  weeds  in — pizen-vines,  and  underbresh, 


32S  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

As  well  as  Johnny-jump-ups,  all  so  fresh 

And  sassy-like !— ^and  groun'-squirls, — yes,  and  ''We," 

As  savin'"  is, — uWe,  Us  and  Compa: 

But  one  cannot  be  sure  of  him.  He  is  an  entertainer,  an  actor, 
a  mimicker.  Does  his  material  really  come  *  *  from  the  hart  out ' ' 
or  is  he  giving,  what  one  always  suspects,  only  excellent  vaude 
ville  T  Even  in  his  most  pathetic  moments  we  catch  for  an  in 
stant,  or  we  feel  that  we  do,  a  glimpse  of  the  suave  face  of  the 
platform  entertainer. 

Once  in  a  while  his  childhood  lyrics  ring  true.  A  little  note 
of  true  pathos  like  this  from  Poems  Here  at  Home  is  worth  a 
library  of  The  Flying  Islands  of  the  Xight  and  of  his  other 
voluminous  echoes  of  Alice  in  Wonderland: 

Let  me  come  in  where  yon  sit  weeping, — aye, 
Let  me,  who  have  not  any  child  to  die, 
Weep  with  yon  for  the  little  one  whose  love 
I  have  known  nothing  of. 

The  little  arms  that  slowly,  slowly  loosed 
Their  pressure  round  your  neck;  the  hands  you  used 
To  kiss, — Such  arms — such  hands  I  never  knew. 
May  I  not  weep  with  you? 

Fain  would  I  be  of  service — say  some  thing, 
Between  the  tears,  that  would  be  comforting, — 
But  ah !  so  sadder  than  yourselves  am  I, 
Who  have  no  child  to  die. 

Despite  his  enormous  vogue,  Riley  must  be  dismissed  as  arti 
ficial  and,  on  the  whole,  insincere.  He  seems  always  to  be  striv 
ing  for  effect — he  is  an  entertainer  who  knows  his  audience 
and  who  is  never  for  a  moment  dulL  He  has  little  of  insight, 
little  knowledge  of  the  deeps  of  life  and  the  human  soul,  little 
of  message,  and  he  wrote  enormously  too  much.  He  must  be 
rated  finally  as  a  comedian,  a  sentimentalist,  an  entertainer. 

His  influence  has  been  great.  A  whole  school  of  imitators  has 
sprung  up  about  him,  the  most  of  whom  have  perished  with  the 
papers  to  which  they  have  contributed.  The  strongest  of  them 
all  undoubtedly  was  Sam  Walter  Foss  (1858-1911)  whose  Back 
Country  Poems  were  genuine  and  distinctive.  Drummond's 
Habitant  ballads,  which  rank  with  the  strongest  dialect  poetry 
of  the  century,  belong  to  Canadian  rather  than  American 
literature.  Stedman  's  praise  of  them  is  none  too  high :  ' '  Most 
of  us  are  content  if  we  sing  an  old  thing  in  a  new  way,  or  a  new 


THE  LATER  POETS  329 

thing  in  an  old  way.  Dr.  Drummond  has  achieved  the  truest 
of  lyrical  successes;  that  of  singing  new  songs,  and  in  a  new 
way.  His  poems  are  idyls  as  true  as  those  of  Theocritus  or 
Burns  or  our  own  poet  of  The  Biglow  Papers-"  z 


III 

Greatly  different  from  Riley,  yet  greatly  like  him  in  many 
ways,  was  Eugene  Field,  in  whom  the  lawlessness  of  the  West 
and  the  culture  of  the  East  met  in  strange  confusion.  Though 
of  Western  origin — he  was  born  at  St.  Louis  in  1850 — he  spent 
the  formative  years  of  his  life  between  six  and  nineteen  with 
his  father's  relatives  at  Amherst,  Massachusetts.  He  completed 
a  year  at  Williams  College,  then,  called  West  by  the  death  of  his 
father,  whose  law  practice  at  St.  Louis  had  been  distinctive,  he 
was  put  by  his  guardian  into  Knox  College.  After  a  year  he 
was  transferred  to  the  University  of  Missouri,  but  coming  of 
age  at  the  close  of  his  junior  year,  and  his  share  of  his  father's 
estate  becoming  available,  he  decided  in  the  spring  of  1872  to 
leave  college  and  travel  in  Europe.  Accordingly,  to  quote  his 
own  words,  he  spent  "six  months  and  [his]  patrimony  in  France, 
Italy,  Ireland,  and  England." 

As  a  general  rule  one  should  quote  the  autobiographical  state 
ments  of  Eugene  Field  with  extreme  caution,  but  one  can  trust 
this  bit  of  his  "Auto-analysis": 

In  May,  1873,  I  became  a  reporter  on  the  St.  Louis  Evening  Journal. 
In  October  of  that  year  I  married  Miss  Julia  Sutherland  Coiustock  of 
St.  Joseph,  Mo.,  at  that  time  a  girl  of  sixteen.  We  have  had  eight 
children — three  daughters  and  five  sons. 

My  newspaper  connections  have  been  as  follows :  1875—76,  city  edi 
tor  of  the  St.  Joseph  (Mo.)  Gazette;  1876-80,  editorial  writer  on  the 
St.  Louis  Journal  and  St.  Louis  Times- Journal;  1880-81,  managing 
editor  of  the  Kansas  City  Times;  1881-83,  managing  editor  of  the  Den 
ver  Tribune.  Since  1883  I  have  been  a  contributor  to  the  Chicago 
Record  (formerly  Morning  News).4 

His  success  with  the  Denver  Tribune,  to  which  he  contributed 
such  widely  copied  work  as  that  published  in  his  first  thin  vol- ! 
ume,  The  Tribune  Primer  (1882),  attracted  attention.     He  be 
gan  to  receive  offers  from  Eastern  papers,  one  at  least  from  ; 

sLife  of  Stedman,  ii:208. 

*  Thompson's  Eugene  Field,  ii:236. 


330  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Dana,  editor  of  the  New  York  Sun,  but  it  was  not  until  Melville 
E.  Stone  offered  him  the  humorous  column  of  his  paper,  the 
Chicago  News,  that  Field  decided  to  turn  eastward.  He  had 
begun  to  dream  of  a  literary  career  and  this  dream,  always  a 
vague  one,  for  he  was  chained  by  poverty  to  a  tyrannical  pro 
fession,  seemed  more  possible  in  a  less  tense  atmosphere  than 
that  of  the  Western  mining  center.  Arriving  at  Chicago  in  1883, 
he  set  out  to  make  his  new  column  a  thing  with  distinction. 
Flats  and  Sharps  was  the  name  he  gave  it,  and  into  it  he  poured 
a  mrlange  of  all  things:  poetry  in  every  key,  paragraphs  on  all 
subjects,  parodies,  hoaxes,  mock  reviews,  pseudo  news,  personals, 
jokes — everything.  He  threw  himself  completely  into  the  thing: 
it  became  his  life  work;  " practically  everything  he  ever  wrote 
appeared  at  one  time  or  another  in  that  column. " 

But  newspaper  humor  usually  perishes  v:Hh  the  flimsy  leaves 
upon  which  it  is  recorded.  Not  until  Field  had  written  "Little 
Boy  Blue"  in  1887  did  he  become  at  all  known  to  the  reading 
public.  The  publication  of  the  popular  editions  of  A  Lit  fir 
Book  of  Profitable  Tales  and  A  Little  Book  of  Western  Verse  in 
1890,  only  five  years  before  his  death,  marks,  perhaps,  the  time 
of  his  general  acceptation  as  a  writer.  Hardly  had  the  public 
learned  to  know  him  before  they  were  called  upon  to  mourn  his 
early  death.  Indeed,  the  work  by  which  he  is  now  best  known 
was  done  almost  all  of  it  in  the  last  six  or  seven  years  of  his  life. 
It  was  only  in  this  brief  later  period  that  he  was  a  "  biblio 
maniac"  or  a  lover  of  Horace  or  a  student  of  the  old  English 
ballads. 

One  must  classify  Eugene  Field  first  of  all  as  a  humorist,  one 
of  the  leading  figures  in  that  nondescript  school  of  newspaper 
comedians  that  has  played  such  a  part  in  the  history  of  the 
period.  To  a  personality  as  high  spirited  and  as  whimsical  as 
Artemus  Ward's  he  added  the  brilliancy  of  a  Locker-Lampson 
and  the  improvidence  of  a  Goldsmith  as  well  as  the  kindly  heart. 
Seriousness  seemed  foreign  to  his  nature :  his  life  was  a  perpetual 
series  of  hoaxes  and  practical  jokes  and  hilarious  sallies.  No  one 
has  surpassed  him  in  the  making  of  parodies,  of  rollicking  para 
phrases  and  adaptations,  in  skilful  blendings  of  modern  and 
antique,  in  clever  minglings  of  seriousness  and  humor.  He  was 
a  maker  of  brilliant  trifles  and  sparkling  non  scquiturs.  His 
irreverence  is  really  startling  at  times.  He  can  make  the  Odes 


THE  LATER  POETS  331 

of  Horace  seem  fit  material  for  the  funny  column  of  a  Chicago 
daily  newspaper : 

Boy,  I  detest  the  Persian  pomp; 

I  hate  those  linden-bark  devices; 
And  as  for  roses,  holy  Moses! 

They  can't  be  got  at  living  prices! 
Myrtle  is  good  enough  for  us, — 

For  you,  as  bearer  of  my  flagon; 
For  me,  supine  beneath  this  vine, 

Doing  my  best  to  get  a  jag  on ! 

He  is  boon  companion  of  the  old  Sabine  poet.  He  slaps  him  on 
the  back  and  invites  him  to  all  kinds  of  costly  revelry,  assuring 
him  that  Maecenas  will  pay  the  freight.  And  Horace  by  no 
means  takes  offense.  He  is  a  congenial  soul. 

I  might  discourse 

Till  I  was  hoarse 
Upon  the  cruelties  of  Venus; 

'T  were  waste  of  time 

As  well  as  rime, 
For  you  Ve  been  there  yourself,  Maecenas ! 

In  the  presence  of  such  an  incorrigible  joker  the  reader  feels 
always  that  he  must  be  on  his  guard.  One  is  never  safe.  Leaf 
ing  the  pages  of  the  large  collected  edition  of  the  poems,  glanc 
ing  over  the  Bret  Harte  echoes  like  " Casey's  Table  D'Hote," 
smiling  at  such  outrageous  nonsense  as  "The  Little  Peach"  and 
' '  The  Onion  Tart, ' '  one  suddenly  draw*  a  sharp  breath.  At  last 
the  heart  of  Eugene  Field : 

Upon  a  mountain  height,  far  from  the  sea, 

I  found  a  shell, 

And  to  my  listening  ear  the  lonely  thing 
Ever  a  song  of  ocean  seemed  to  sing, 

Ever  a  tale  of  ocean  seemed  to  tell. 

Strange,  was  it  not?     Far  from  its  native  deep, 

One  song  it  sang, — 

Sang  of  the  awful  mysteries  of  the  tide, 
Sang  of  the  misty  sea,  profound  and  wide, — 

Ever  with  echoes  of  the  ocean  rang. 

And  as  the  shell  upon  the  mountain  height 

Sings  of  the  sea, 

So  do  I  ever,  leagues  and  leagues  away, — 
So  do  I  ever,  wandering  where  I  may, — 

Sing,  0  my  home !  sing,  0  my  home !  of  thee. 


332  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

A  lyric  worthy  of  any  anthology.  Yet  one  quickly  finds  that  it 
is  not  Eugene  Field  at  all.  He  wrote  it  deliberately  as  a  hoax, 
a  practical  joke  on  Modjeska,  who  all  the  rest  of  her  life  was 
obliged  to  deny  the  authorship  which  Field  had  cunningly  fas 
tened  upon  her.  The  case  is  typical.  Like  Riley,  the  man  is 
making  copy.  He  uses  pathos  and  sentiment  and  the  most  sacred 
things  as  literary  capital.  One  wonders  where  one  can  draw 
the  line.  Was  he  really  sincere  in  his  child  lyrics  and  his  biblio 
maniac  writings  or  was  he  cleverly  playing  a  part  ? 

In  criticizing  Field  one  must  remember  the  essential  imma 
turity  of  the  man.  His  frequent  artificiality  and  his  lack  of  sin 
cerity  came  from  his  boyishness  and  his  high  spirits.  He  looked 
at  life  from  the  angle  of  mischievous  boyhood.  Moreover,  he 
wrote  always  at  the  high  tension  of  the  newspaper  office,  for  a 
thing  that  had  no  memory,  a  column  that  had  but  one  demand — 
more!  It  bred  in  him  what  may  be  denominated,  perhaps,  the 
ephemeral  habit.  He  was  all  his  life  a  man  preeminently  and 
predominatingly  of  the  present  moment,  and  thus  he  stands  a 
type  of  the  literary  creator  that  was  to  follow  him. 

For  Field  more  than  any  other  writer  of  the  period  illustrates 
the  way  the  old  type  of  literary  scholar  was  to  be  modified  and 
changed  by  the  newspaper.  Every  scrap  of  Field's  voluminous 
product  was  written  for  immediate  newspaper  consumption. 
He  patronized  not  at  all  the  literary  magazines,  he  wrote  his 
books  not  at  all  with  book  intent — he  made  them  up  from  news 
paper  fragments.  He  wrote  always  a  timely  thing  to  the  people, 
a  thing  growing  out  of  the  present  moment  for  the  people  to  read, 
making  palatable  for  them  even  Horace  and  the  severer  classics. 
He  was  thus  one  of  the  leading  forces  in  what  may  be  called 
that  democratizing  of  literature  for  which  the  period  so  largely 
stands. 

He  has  been  given  a  place  far  beyond  his  real  deserts.  The 
sentiment  of  " Little  Boy  Blue"  and  the  other  child  lyrics,  the 
whimsical  fun  and  high  spirits  of  his  comic  verse,  endeared  him 
to  the  public  that  enjoyed  Riley.  Then  his  whimsical,  Gold 
smith-like  personality  helped  his  fame,  as  did  also  his  death, 
since  it  followed  so  quickly  his  late  discovery  by  the  reading 
public  that  it  gave  the  impression  he  had  been  removed  like 
Keats  at  the  very  opening  of  his  career.  He  must  be  rated, 
however,  not  for  what  he  wrote,  though  a  few  pieces,  like  his 


THE  LATER  POETS  333 

child  lyrics  and  his  bibliomaniac  ballads,  will  continue  long  in 
the  anthologies,  but  for  the  influence  he  exerted.  He  was  a 
pioneer  in  a  peculiar  province:  he  stands  for  the  journalization 
of  literature,  a  process  that,  if  carried  to  its  logical  extreme,  will 
make  of  the  man  of  letters  a  mere  newspaper  reporter. 

IV 

In  his  own  estimation  Field  was  distinctively  a  Western  poet ; 
he  gave  to  his  poetry  the  name  *  *  Western  verse ' ' ;  and  he  refused 
the  offers  of  Dana  and  others  because  he  was  not  at  all  in  sym 
pathy  with  the  Eastern  ideals.  To  quote  his  biographer,  he  felt 
that  Chicago  "was  as  far  East  as  he  could  make  his  home  with 
out  coming  within  the  influence  of  those  social  and  literary 
conventions  that  have  squeezed  so  much  of  genuine  literary 
flavor  out  of  our  literature. ' ' 5 

What  New  York  might  have  made  of  Field  we  may  learn,  per 
haps,  from  the  career  of  Henry  Cuyler  Bunner,  for  nearly  twenty 
years  the  most  brilliant  poetic  wit  in  the  East.  He,  too,  had 
approached  literature  from  the  journalistic  entrance.  At  eight 
een  he  had  left  school  to  begin  an  apprenticeship  on  the  brilliant 
but  short-lived  Arcadian,  and  at  twenty-two  he  was  editor  of  the 
newly  established  Puck,  a  position  that  he  held  until  his  death 
at  forty-one. 

No  man  ever  turned  off  verse  and  prose  with  more  facility  or 
in  greater  quantity.  "The  staff  of  the  paper  was  very  small, 
and  little  money  could  be  spent  for  outside  contributions;  and 
there  were  many  weeks  when  nearly  half  the  whole  number  was 
written  by  Bunner. ' ' 6  Like  Field,  he  could  write  a  poem  while 
the  office  boy,  who  had  brought  the  order,  stood  waiting  for  the 
copy  to  carry  back  with  him.  For  more  than  ten  years  he  fur 
nished  nearly  all  the  humorous  verse  for  the  periodical,  besides 
numberless  paragraphs,  short  stories,  and  editorials.  But  he 
was  more  fastidious  than  Field,  inasmuch  as  he  kept  this  jour 
nalistic  material  strictly  unconnected  with  his  name.  It  was  a 
thing  alone  of  the  editorial  office,  no  more  to  be  mingled  with 
his  more  literary  product  than  Charles  Lamb's  India  office  books 
were  to  be  brought  into  his  Elia  essays.  The  greater  number  of 
those  who  laughed  over  the  verses  of  the  whimsical  "V.  Hugo 

5  Thompson,  Eugene  Field,  i :   193. 

6  Brander  Matthews,  The  Historical  Novel,  173. 


334  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Dusenberry,  professional  poet,"  never  once  dreamed  that  he  was 
II.  ('.  liunner,  author  of  the  exquisite  lyrics  in  Airs  from  Ar- 
<(/'///  and  Row  en,  and  the  carefully  wrought  stories — French  in 
their  atmosphere  and  their  artistic  finish — Short  Sixes  and  Love 
in  Old  Cloathi's.  The  skilful  parodies  and  timely  renderings,  the 
quips  and  puns — all  the  voluminous  melange,  indeed,  of  the 
poetic  Yorick — lie  buried  now  in  the  files  of  Puck.  Their  cre 
ator  refused  to  republish  them,  and  we  to-day  can  but  yield  to 
his  wish  and  judge  him  only  by  that  which  he  himself  selected 
for  permanence. 

Judged  by  this,  Bunner  undoubtedly  is  our  chief  writer  of 
vers  de  societe,  our  laureate  of  the  trivial.  He  is  restrained, 
refined,  faultless.  He  is  of  the  artificial  world,  where  fans  flut 
ter  and  dancers  glide  and  youth  is  perennial.  Triolets  penciled 
in  the  program  while  the  orchestra  breathed  its  melody,  epigrams 
over  the  tea-cups,  conceits  for  a  fan,  amours  de  voyage,  lines 
written  on  the  menu,  amoretti,  valentines — these  are  his  work, 
and  no  one  has  done  them  more  daintily  or  with  more  skill  of 
touch.  Trifles  they  are,  to  be  sure,  yet  Bunner,  like  every  mas 
ter  of  the  form,  makes  of  them  more  than  trifles.  A  hint  of 
tears  there  may  be,  the  faintest  breath  of  irony,  the  suspicion, 
vague  as  an  intuition,  of  satire  or  facetiousness  or  philosophy, 
the  high  spirits  and  the  carelessness  of  youth,  yet  a  flash  here 
and  there  into  the  deeps  of  life  as,  for  instance,  in  ''Betrothed'' 
and  "A  Poem  in  the  Programme,"  and  "She  was  a  Beauty  in 
the  Days  when  Madison  was  President." 

The  French  forms,  imported  echoes  of  Dobson  and  Lang  and 
Gosse — ballades,  rondels,  rondeaux,  and  the  like,  that  so  be 
witched  the  younger  poets  of  the  mid-eighties — found  in  Bunner 
perhaps  their  most  skilful  American  devotee.  Perhaps  no  one 
but  he  has  ever  succeeded  in  English  with  the  chant  royal,  or  has 
found  it  possible  to  throw  into  that  most  trivial  of  all  verse 
forms,  triolets,  a  throb  of  life,  as  in  "A  Pitcher  of  Mignonette": 

A  pitcher  of  mignonette 

In  a  tenement's  highest  casement: 
Queer  sort  of  flower-pot — yet 
That  pitcher  of  mignonette 
Is  a  .Harden  in  heaven  set, 

T.i  tin-  littlr  sick  child  in  the  basement — 
The  pitcher  of  uimnonette, 

In  the  tenement's  highest  casement. 


THE  LATER  POETS  335 

The  period,  especially  in  its  later  years,  has  run  abundantly 
to  these  trivial,  though  difficult,  forms  of  verse.  As  poetry  ceased 
more  and  more  to  be  a  thing  of  vision  and  compelling  power, 
it  became  more  and  more  a  thing  of  daintiness  and  brilliancy. 
The  American  Lyra  Elegantiarum  for  the  period  has  been  more 
sparkling  and  abundant  than  the  English,  more  even  than  the 
French.  John  Godfrey  Saxe  (1816-1887)  belongs  almost  wholly 
to  the  days  of  Holmes  and  Lowell,  but  the  greater  number  of 
our  trivial  makers  fall  into  the  group  that  was  active  during  the 
closing  quarter  of  the  century.  To  mention  all  of  them  would 
be  to  call  the  roll  of  the  younger  American  poets.  Perhaps  the 
most  noteworthy,  however,  are  Mary  Mapes  Dodge  (1838-1905), 
whose  dainty  and  tender  "The  Minuet"  gives  her  a  place  in 
the  choir;  James  Jeffrey  Eoche  (1847-1908);  Walter  Learned 
(1847 )  ;  Richard  Kendall  Munkittrick  (1853-1911)  ;  Sam 
uel  Minturn  Peck  (1854 ),  in  many  respects  the  most 

delightful  of  the   group;   Clinton   Scollard    (1860 );   John 

Kendrick   Bangs    (1862 ),    and    such   modern   instances    as 

Oliver  Herford,  Gelett  Burgess,  and  Carolyn  Wells.  One 
might,  indeed,  collect  a  notable  anthology  of  vers  de  societe  from 
the  files  of  Life  alone. 


A  large  amount  of  the  poetry  of  the  era  has  been  written  by 
women.  After  the  war  their  thin  volumes,  bound  in  creamy 
vellum  and  daintily  tinted  cloth,  began  more  and  more  to  fill  the 
book  tables,  until  reviewers  no  longer  could  give  separate  notice 
to  them,  but  must  consider  the  poets  of  a  month  in  groups  of 
ten  or  twelve.  The  quality  of  the  feminine  product  was  high 
enough  to  find  place  in  the  most  exclusive  monthlies,  and  the 
quantity  published  was  surprising.  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  for 
instance,  during  the  decade  from  1870  published  108  poems  by 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  Holmes,  Lowell,  and  Aldrich,  and  450 
other  poems,  and  of  the  latter  201  were  by  women.  The  femi 
nine  novelists  and  short  story  writers,  so  conspicuous  during  all 
the  period,  were,  indeed,  almost  all  poets,  some  of  them  volumi 
nous.  One  may  note  the  names  not  only  of  the  older  group — 
Mrs.  Stuart  Phelps  Ward,  Mrs.  Cooke,  Mrs.  Spofford,  Miss 
Woolson — but  of  such  later  writers  as  Mrs.  Freeman,  Alice 
Brown,  Mrs.  Deland,  and  Mrs.  Riggs. 


336  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Very  little  of  this  mass  of  poetry  has  been  strong  enough  to 
demand  republication  from  the  dainty  volumes  in  which  it  first 
appeared.  It  has  been  smooth  and  often  melodious,  but  for  the 
most  part  it  has  been  conventional.  Prevailingly  it  has  been 
short  lyric  song  in  minor  key,  gentle  and  sentimental — graceful 
exercises  in  verse  rather  than  voices  from  a  soul  stirred  to  utter 
ance  and  caring  not.  In  a  sonneteering  age  this  feminine  con 
tingent  has  swelled  enormously  the  volume  of  sonnets.  Helen 
Hunt  Jackson's  thin  volume  contains  one  hundred,  Louise 
Chandler  Moulton's  one  hundred  and  thirty-one,  yet  in  both 
collections  occurs  no  sonnet  one  would  dream  of  adding  to  the 
select  few  that  undoubtedly  are  worth  while.  Here  and  there 
in  Mrs.  Jackson  a  bit  of  work  like  " Poppies  on  the  Wheat," 
"Glimpses,"  "Vashti,"  that  rises,  perhaps,  a  little  above  the 
level  monotony  of  the  times,  but  in  the  vital  seventies  in  America 
why  should  one  have  published  sonnets?  Even  as  she  was  shap 
ing  them,  Emma  Lazarus  (1849-1887)  was  demanding  in  major 
key, 

How  long,  and  yet  how  long, 
Our  leaders  will  we  hail  from  over  seas, 
Masters  and  kings  from  feudal  monarchies, 

And  mock  their  ancient  song 
With  echoes  weak  of  foreign  melodies? 

This  fresh  young  world  I  see, 
With  heroes,  cities,  legends  of  her  own ; 
With  a  new  race  of  men,  and  overblown 

By  winds  from  sea  to  sea, 
Decked  with  the  majesty  of  every  zone. 

The  distant  siren-song 
Of  the  green  island  in  the  eastern  sea, 
Is  not  the  lay  for  this  new  chivalry. 

It  is  not  free  and  stronir 
To  chant  on  prairies  'neath  this  brilliant  sky. 

The  echo  faints  and  fails; 
It  suiteth  not,  upon  this  western  plain, 
Our  voice  or  spirit ;  we  should  stir  again 

The  wilderness,  and  make  the  vales 
Resound  unto  a  yet  unheard-of  strain. 

The  life  of  Emma  Lazarus  was  brief  and  externally  eventless. 
Born  in  New  York  City  in  a  home  of  refinement  and  wealth,  as 


THE  LATER  POETS  337 

a  child  precocious,  inclined  to  seriousness,  intense,  she  passed 
her  early  life  among  books  rather  than  among  companions.  At 
seventeen  she  had  issued  a  collection  of  verses,  melancholy  even 
above  the  usual  poetry  of  women,  valueless  utterly;  then  at 
twenty-one  she  had  published  again,  now  a  long  poem,  Greek  in 
its  chaste  beauty,  Admetus,  inscribed  "To  My  Friend  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson."  Two  forces  were  contending,  even  as  they 
had  contended  in  Heine.  In  Paris  in  later  years  before  the 
Venus  of  the  Louvre  she  wrote  a  sonnet,  and,  miracle  among 
modern  sonnets,  it  is  impassioned,  unfettered,  alive — a  woman's 
soul: 

...  I  saw  not  her  alone, 

Serenely  poised  on  her  world-worshiped  throne, 

As  when  she  guided  once  her  dove-drawn  car, — 

But  at  her  feet  a  pale,  death-stricken  Jew, 

Her  life  adorer,  sobbed  farewell  to  love. 

Here  Heine  wept !     Here  still  he  weeps  anew, 

Nor  ever  shall  his  shadow  lift  or  move, 

While  mourns  one  ardent  heart,  one  poet-brain, 

For  vanished  Hellas  and  Hebraic  pain. 

Until  1876  quiet  emotion,  Hellenic  beauty,  romance  without 
passion.  ' ' Tannhauser ' '  suggests  William  Morris  and  The 
Earthly  Paradise.  Then  came  The  Spagnioletto,  a  tense  drama, 
which  showed  for  the  first  time  the  latent  embers  in  her  Hebraic 
soul.  It  needed  but  a  breath  to  kindle  them  and  that  breath 
came  with  reports  of  the  Jewish  massacres  of  1879.  No  more 
of  Hellenism.  With  Liebhaid  in  The  Dance  of  Death,  that  most 
tense  drama  in  American  literature,  she  could  cry  out: 

No  more  of  that. 

I  am  all  Israel's  now — till  this  cloud  pass, 
I  have  no  thought,  no  passion,  no  desire, 
Save  for  my  people. 

Henceforth  fiery  lyrics  of  denunciation,  rallying  cries,  trans 
lations  of  Hebrew  prophets,  songs  of  encouragement  and  cheer, 
as  "The  Crowing  of  the  Red  Cock,"  "In  Exile,"  "The  New 
Ezekiel,"  "The  Valley  of  Baca,"  and,  most  Hebraic  of  all,  "The 
Banner  of  the  Jew,"  with  its  ringing  lines: 

Oh,  for  Jerusalem's  trumpet  now, 
To  blow   a  blast   of  shattering  power, 


338  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

To  wake  the  sleepers  high  and  low, 

And  rouse  them  to  the  urgent  hour! 
No  hand  for  vengeance — but  to  save, 
A  million  naked  swords  should  wave. 

The  fire  was  too  intense  for  the  frail,  sensitive  body.  Sud 
denly,  like  Heine,  she  was  on  a  "mattress  grave, "  powerless, 
though  never  so  eager,  never  so  quivering  with  burning  message. 
She  died  at  thirty-eight. 

Xo  more  impetuous  and  Hebraic  lines  in  the  literature  of  the 
period  than  hers.  Often  she  achieved  a  distinction  of  phrase 
and  an  inevitableness  of  word  and  of  rhythm  denied  to  all  but 
the  truest  of  poets.  No  other  American  woman  has  surpassed 
her  in  passion,  in  genuineness  of  emotion,  in  pure  lyric  effect. 

Other  impassioned  singers  there  have  been.  Ella  Wheeler 

Wilcox  (1855 )  wrote  of  love  with  lyric  abandon,  but  she 

mingled  too  much  of  sentimentality  and  all  too  much  of  posing 
and  of  tawdriness.  Anne  Reeve  Aldrich  (1866-1892)  in  SOIKJ* 
About  Life,  Love,  and  Death  struck  deeper  notes,  and  Elizabeth 
Akers  Allen  (1832-1911),  though  she  wrote  exceedingly  much 
in  the  key  of  the  conventional  mid-century  sadness  and  longing, 
yet  now  and  then  sent  forth  lyrics  that  laid  bare  her  woman's 
soul. 

One  may  not  dismiss  so  confidently  Celia  Thaxter,  the  poet 
of  the  Isles  of  Shoals.  She  was,  to  be  sure,  no  dominating  voice 
in  the  period,  no  poet  with  whom  distinction  of  phrase  and 
poetic  melody  were  native  and  spontaneous.  Rather  was  she  of 
the  Jean  Ingelow  type,  feminine,  domestic,  tremulous  with  senti 
ment.  In  one  area,  however,  she  commanded :  her  poetry  of  the 
sea  was  autochthonic,  and  it  sprang  not  from  books,  but  from  her 
life.  Her  childhood  she  had  passed  in  the  seclusion  of  the  light 
house  keeper's  home  on  White  Island,  a  storm-beaten  rock  off 
the  New  Hampshire  coast.  For  months  at  a  time  no  visitors 
came  save  the  sea  gulls  and  the  migrating  birds.  Her  com 
panion  through  all  her  young  girlhood  was  the  ocean.  She  grew 
to  know  intimately  all  its  thousand  moods,  the  sea  gardens  alon^ 
the  rocks  at  low  tide,  the  ships  that  hovered  like  clouds  on  the 
horizon,  the  flowers  in  the  rock  crannies,  the  sandpipers  that 
flitted  before  her  on  the  beach.  The  birds  that  flew  against  the 
lantern  of  the  lighthouse  on  migrating  nights  furnished  the  first 
tragedy  of  her  life : 


THE  LATER  POETS  339 

Many  a  May  morning  have  I  wandered  about  the  rock  at  the  foot 
of  the  tower,  mourning  over  a  little  apron  brimful  of  sparrows,  swal 
lows,  thrushes,  robins,  fire-winged  blackbirds,  many-colored  warblers 
and  fly-catchers,  beautifully  clothed  yellow-birds,  nuthatches,  catbirds, 
even  the  purple  finch  and  scarlet  tanager  and  golden  oreole,  and  many 
more  besides — enough  to  break  the  heart  of  a  small  child  to  think  of!  f 

No  ordinary  child,  this  lonely  little  islander.  The  lure  of  the 
sea  possessed  her,  the  terror  of  its  storms,  the  beauty  of  its 
summer  moods,  the  multitudinous  variety  of  its  voice.  "Many 
a  summer  morning  have  I  crept  out  of  the  still  house  before  any 
one  was  awake,  and,  wrapping  myself  closely  from  the  chill  wind 
of  dawn,  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  high  cliff  called  the  Head 
to  watch  the  sunrise. ' '  It  was  this  communion  with  the  sea  that 
awoke  the  poet  soul  within  her : 

Ever  I  longed  to  speak  these  things  that  made  life  so  sweet,  to  speak 
the  wind,  the  cloud,  the  bird's  flight,  the  sea's  murmur.  A  vain  long 
ing!  I  might  as  well  have  sighed  for  the  mighty  pencil  of  Michel 
Angelo  to  wield  in  my  impotent  child's  hand.  Better  to  "hush  and 
bless  one's  self  with  silence" ;  but  ever  the  wish  grew.  Facing  the  July 
sunsets,  deep  red  and  golden  through  and  through,  or  watching  the 
summer  northern  lights — battalions  of  brilliant  streamers,  advancing  and 
retreating,  shooting  upward  to  the  zenith,  and  glowing  like  fiery  veils 
before  the  stars;  or  when  the  fog  bow  spanned  the  silver  mist  of 
morning,  or  the  earth  and  sea  lay  shimmering  in  a  golden  haze  of 
noon;  in  storm  or  calm,  by  day  or  night,  the  manifold  aspects  of  Na 
ture  held  me  and  swayed  all  my  thoughts  until  it  was  impossible  to  be 
silent  any  longer,  and  I  was  fain  to  mingle  my  voice  with  her  myriad 
voices,  only  aspiring  to  be  in  accord  with  the  Infinite  harmony,  how 
ever  feeble  and  broken  the  notes  might  be.8 

The  first  poem  of  hers  to  gain  the  ear  of  the  public  was  "Land- 
Locked,"  accepted  by  Lowell  and  published  in  the  Atlantic, 
March,  1861.  Its  closing  stanzas  ring  with  sincerity.  It  is  the 
voice  of  every  inland  dweller  whose  youth  has  been  spent  by 
the  sea: 

Neither  am  I  ungrateful;  but  I  dream 
Deliciously  how  twilight  falls  to-night 
Over  the  glimmering  water,  how  the  light 

Dies  blissfully  away,  until  I  seem 

7  Among  the  Isles  of  Shoals,  111. 
Blbid..  141. 


340  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

To  feel  the  wind,  sea-scented,  on  my  cheek, 
To  catch  the  sound  of  dusky  flapping  sail 
And  dip  of  oars,  and  voices  on  the  gale 

Afar  off,  calling  low — my  name  they  speak! 

0   Earth!  thy  summer  song  of  joy  may  soar 
Ringing  to  heaven  in  triumph.     I  but  crave 
The  sad,  caressing  murmur  of  the  wave 

That  breaks  in  tender  music  on  the  shore. 

About  all  her  poetry  of  the  sea  there  are  genuineness  and 
truth  to  experience.  All  of  them  are  fragments  of  autobiog 
raphy:  "Off  Shore, "  "The  Wreck  of  the  Pocahontas,"  "The 
Sandpiper,"  "Watching,"  "At  the  Breakers'  Edge,"  "The 
Watch  of  Boon  Island,"  "Leviathan" — all  of  them  have  in  them 
the  heart  of  the  northern  Atlantic.  They  are  not  deep  like 
Whitman's  mighty  voicings,  but  they  are  the  cry  of  one  who 
knew  and  loved  the  sea  better  than  any  other  American  who  has 
ever  written  about  it. 

Her  prose  study  Among  the  Isles  of  Shoals,  overflorid  though 
it  may  be  in  places,  is  nevertheless  one  of  the  notable  books  of 
the  period.  Nowhere  may  one  find  so  complete  a  picture  of  the 
northern  ocean  in  all  its  moods  and  aspects.  Its  pictures  of 
storm  and  wreck,  its  glimpses  of  the  tense  and  hazardous  life 
of  dwellers  by  the  ocean,  its  disclosings  of  the  mystery  and  the 
subtle  lure  of  the  sea,  stir  one  at  times  like  the  deeper  notes  of 
poetry. 

One  of  the  most  perplexing  of  later  poetic  problems  came  in 
1890  with  the  publication  by  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  of 
the  posthumous  poetry  of  Emily  Dickinson  (1830-1886).  The 
explanation  by  Higginson  that  the  poet  was  a  daughter  of  the 
treasurer  of  Amherst  College,  that  she  was  a  recluse  "literally 
spending  years  without  setting  her  foot  beyond  the  doorstep 
and  many  more  years  during  which  her  walks  were  strictly 
limited  to  her  father's  grounds,"  and  that  she  had  written 
"verses  in  great  abundance,"  refusing,  however,  save  in  three 
or  four  instances,  to  allow  any  of  them  to  be  published,  that  she 
wrote  "absolutely  without  thought  of  publication,  and  solely  by 
way  of  expression  of  the  writer's  own  mind," — all  this  aroused 
curiosity.  At  last  one  might  see,  perchance,  a  woman's  soul. 

The  poems  are  disappointing.  Critics  have  echoed  Higgin 
son,  until  Emily  Dickinson  has  figured,  often  at  length,  in  all 


THE  LATER  POETS  341 

the  later  histories  and  anthologies,  but  it  is  becoming  clear  that 
she  was  overrated.  To  compare  her  eccentric  fragments  with 
Blake's  elfin  wildness  is  ridiculous.  They  are  mere  conceits, 
vague  jottings  of  a  brooding  mind;  they  are  crudely  wrought, 
and,  like  their  author's  letters,  which  were  given  to  the  public 
later,  they  are  colorless  and  for  the  most  part  lifeless.  They 
reveal  little  either  of  Emily  Dickinson  or  of  human  life  gen 
erally.  They  should  have  been  allowed  to  perish  as  their  author 
intended. 

Most  of  the  feminine  poets  of  the  later  generation  have  been 
over-literary.  There  is  grace  and  finish  in  the  work  of  Louise 

Imogen  Guiney  (1861 ),  but  nowhere  in  all  her  carefully 

selected  final  volume,  Happy  Ending,  are  there  lines  that  sud 
denly  send  the  pulses  into  quicker  beat  and  haunt  the  memory. 
It  is  beautiful,  but  it  is  of  a  piece  with  ten  thousand  other  beau 
tiful  pieces;  there  is  nothing  to  compel  the  reader,  nothing  to 
lead  him  into  fresh  fields.  Of  all  too  many  of  the  later  feminine 
poets  may  we  say  this :  of  Ina  Donna  Coolbrith,  for  instance,  and 

Helen  Gray  Cone  (1859 ),  Dora  Read  Goodale  (1866 ), 

Katharine  Lee  Bates  (1859 ). 

Only  one  other  feminine  singer  has  done  work  that  compels 

attention,  Edith  Matilda  Thomas  (1854 ).  Only  by  birth 

and  rearing  was  she  of  Ohio.  To  read  her  poems  is  to  be  trans 
ported  into  that  no-man's  land  which  so  many  poets  have  called 
Arcady.  She  is  more  Greek  than  American.  She  has  reacted 
little  upon  her  time,  and  she  might  be  dismissed  with  mere  men 
tion  were  there  not  in  many  of  her  poems  a  lyric  distinction  that 
has  been  rare  in  American  poetry.  A  fragment  from  her  work 
will  make  this  clearer  than  exposition.  Here,  for  instance,  are 
the  opening  stanzas  of  "Syrinx": 

Come  forth,  too  timid  spirit  of  the  reed! 

Leave  thy  plashed  coverts  and  elusions  shy, 
And  find  delight  at  large  in  grove  and  mead. 

No  ambushed  harm,  no  wanton's  peering  eye, 
The  shepherd's  uncouth  god  thou  needst  not  fear — 
Pan  has  not  passed  this  way  for  many  a  year. 

'Tis  but  the  vagrant  wind  that  makes  thee  start, 
The  pleasure-loving  south,  the  freshening  west; 

The  willow's  woven  veil  they  softly  part, 
To  fan  the  lily  on  the  stream's  warm  breast*. 


342  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

No  ruder  stir,  no  footstep  pressing  near — 
Pan  has  not  passed  this  way  for  many  a  year. 

Unlooked-for  music  indeed  from  the  banks  of  the  Ohio.  Her 
muse  was  remote,  unimpassioned,  classical,  yet  no  lyrist  of  the 
period  has  had  more  of  the  divine  poetic  gift  of  expression.  She 
seems  curiously  out  of  place  in  the  headlong  Wesr  in  those 
stormy  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


Belated  singers  of  the  mid-century  music  were  Richard  Watson 
Gilder  (1844-1909),  Edward  Roland  Sill  (1841-1887),  George 

E.  Woodberry  (1855—  — ),  and  Henry  Van  Dyke  (1852 ), 

all  of  them  poets  like  Miss  Thomas,  who  were  remote  from  their 
era,  workers  in  art  and  beauty  rather  than  voices  and  leaders. 

One  may  pause  long  with  Gilder.  No  other  man  of  his  gen 
eration  did  so  much  to  turn  the  direction  of  the  period  and  to 
determine  its  nature.  As  managing  editor  of  Scribn<r'x 
Monthly  from  the  first  number  to  the  last,  and  then  after  the 
death  of  Holland,  editor  of  the  Century  Magazine,  he  exerted 
for  twenty-eight  years  an  influence  upon  American  letters  that 
cannot  be  overestimated.  In  a  way  he  is  the  central  literary 
figure  of  the  period,  even  more  so  than  Dr.  Holland.  More  than 
any  one  else  he  was  responsible  for  the  revolution  in  maga/ino 
management  for  which  the  period  stands,  and  more  than  any 
one  else  he  helped  to  gather  the  new  school  of  novelists  and 
short  story  writers  and  poets  that  made  the  era  distinctive.  He 
was  the  James  T.  Fields  of  the  national  period. 

He  was  first  of  all  an  editor,  then  he  was  a  humanitarian, 
active  in  all  movements  for  city  betterment,  then  he  was  a  poet. 
Px'iri lining  with  The  New  Day  in  1875,  he  issued  many  small 
volumes  of  delicate  verse,  mystical  often  in  tone,  always  serious, 
always  artistic.  That  he  knew  the  divine  commission  of  the 
poet  he  revealed  in  his  volume  The  Celestial  Passion,  1878: 

Dost  thou  not  know  this  is  the  poet's  lot : 

Mid  sounds  of  war — in  halcyon  times  of  peace — 

To  strike  the  ringing  lyre  and  not  to  cease; 

In  hours  of  general  happiness  to  swell 

The  common  joy ;  and  when  the  people  cry 

With  piteous  voice  loud  to  the  pitiless  sky, 

'Tis  his  to  frame  the  universal  prayer 

And  breathe  the  balm  of  song  upon  the  accursed  air? 


THE  LATER  POETS  343 

But  he  himself  seemed  not  bound  by  this  ideal  of  the  poet.  His 
carefully  wrought  verses  add  little  that  is  new,  and  little  that 
may  be  understood  by  those  for  whom  a  poet  should  sing.  They 
lack  substance,  the  Zeitgeist,  masculinity.  Stedman  could  say 
that  they  are  "marked  by  the  mystical  beauty,  intense  emotion, 
and  psychological  emotion  of  the  elect  illuminati,"  but  the  criti 
cism,  even  were  it  true,  was  condemnatory.  Gilder's  definition 
did  not  mention  the  "elect  illuminati." 

It  is  depressing  to  think  that  this  most  virile  of  men,  who 
was  the  tireless  leader  of  his  generation  in  so  many  beneficent 
fields  of  activity,  must  be  judged  in  the  coming  periods  solely 
by  this  volume  of  poems.  For  classic  poetry  was  not  his  life- 
work,  not  his  enthusiasm,  not  himself — it  was  a  rarely  furnished 
room  in  the  heart  of  his  home,  rather,  where  at  times  he  might 
retire  from  the  tumult  and  enjoy  the  beauty  he  had  gathered 
in  the  realms  of  gold.  He  was  not  a  poet,  singing  inevitable 
lines,  spontaneous  and  inspired.  His  poems  lacked  lyric  dis 
tinction,  that  compelling  quality  that  sinks  a  poem  into  the 
reader's  soul,  and,  lacking  it,  they  have  little  hope  for  perma 
nence.  They  are  finished  always  and  coldly  beautiful,  but  finish 
and  beauty  are  not  enough.  So  it  is  with  George  E.  Wood- 
berry's  polished  work,  and  Father  Tabb's.  It  is  not  vital  with 
the  life  of  an  epoch,  it  is  not  the  voice  of  a  soul  deeply  stirred 
with  a  new  and  compelling  message.  All  too  often  it  has  come 
from  deliberate  effort;  it  is  a  mere  performance. 

With  the  work  of  Edward  Rowland  Sill  one  must  be  less  posi 
tive.  Here  we  find  conflict,  reaction,  spontaneous  expression. 
He  was  by  no  means  a  voice  of  his  era,  a  robust  shouter  like 
Whitman  and  Miller :  he  was  a  gentle,  retiring  soul  who  felt  out 
of  place  in  his  generation.  Seriousness  had  come  to  him  as  a 
birthright.  Behind  him  were  long  lines  of  Connecticut  Puri 
tans.  He  was  frail,  moreover,  of  physique,  with  a  shrinking 
that  was  almost  feminine  from  all  that  was  discordant  and 
assertive.  After  his  graduation  at  Yale,  the  poet  of  his  class, 
m  1861,  he  was  unable  to  settle  upon  a  profession.  He  at 
tempted  theology,  and  then,  disillusioned,  for  bare  support  he 
drifted  into  teaching.  Year  after  year  passed  with  the  problem 
unsettled,  until  he  awoke  to  find  that  teaching  was  to  be  his  life- 
work.  He  had  hidden  among  the  children  in  the  schoolroom, 
and  the  things  he  had  dreamed  over  had  passed  him  by.  His 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE 

\:ernal  biography  is  largely  a  list  of  schools  and  positions. 
At  forty-six  ho  died. 

Poetry  to  Sill  was  a  peculiarly  personal  tiling,  almost  as  much 
so  as  it  was  to  Emily  Dickinson.  He  was  not  eager  to  publish, 
and  much  that  he  did  send  to  the  magazines  bore  other  names 
than  his  own.  He  wrote,  as  Thoreau  wrote  his  journal,  with 
simple  directness  for  himself  and  the  gods,  and  as  a  result  we 
have  in  his  work  the  inner  history  of  a  human  soul.  There  is 
no  artificiality,  no  sentimental  vaporings,  no  posing  for  effect. 
It  is  not  art ;  it  is  life. 

Here  is  poetry  of  struggle,  poetry  not  of  the  spirit  of  an 
epoch  but  of  the  life  of  an  individual  at  odds  with  the  epoch, 
introspective,  personal.  One  thinks  of  Clough,  who  also  was 
a  teacher,  a  gentle  soul  oppressed  with  doubts  and  fears,  a  strug- 
gler  in  the  darkness  of  the  late  nineteenth  century.  But  Sill 
was  less  masculine  than  Clough.  His  doubtings  are  gentle  and 
half  apologetic.  Never  is  he  bitter  or  excited  or  impetuous.  To 
such  robust  climaxes  as  "Say  not  the  Struggle  Naught  Avail- 
eth"  he  is  incapable  of  rising:  he  broods,  but  he  is  resigned. 
He  exhorts  himself  deliberately  to  cheerfulness  and  faith  and 
to  heights  of  manhood  where  all  that  is  low  may  fall  away. 
Erotic  passion  has  no  part  in  his  work.  He  has  deliberately 
conquered  it : 

Is  my  life  but  Marguerite's  ox-eyed  flower. 
That  I  should  stand  and  pluck  and  fling  away, 
One  after  one,  the  petal  of  each  hour, 
Like  a  love-dreamy  girl,  and  only  say, 
"Loves  me,"'  and  "loves  me  not,"  and  "loves  me"?    Nay! 
Let  the  man's  mind  awake  to  manhood's  power. 

No  poet  has  shrunk  more  sensitively  from  the  realistic,  ma 
terial  age  of  which  he  was  a  part  than  Sill.  His  poems  deal 
with  the  realm  of  the  spirit  rather  than  with  the  tangible.  They 
are  without  time  and  place  and  material  basis.  One  may  illus 
trate  with  the  poems  he  wrote  for  Yale  gatherings.  They  are 
colorless:  change  but  the  name  and  they  would  apply  as  well 
to  Harvard  or  Princeton.  Read  in  connection  with  Ilovey's 
dramatic,  intensely  individual  Dartmouth  poems  and  they  seem 
like  beautiful  clouds.  They  are  serious,  often  over-serious,  they 
have  no  trace  of  humor,  they  deal  with  the  soul  life  of  one  upon 
whom  the  darkness  threatens  constantly  to  fall. 


THE  LATER  POETS  345 

His  claim  to  remembrance  comes  not  from  lyrical  inspiration, 
for  he  was  not  lyrically  gifted.  He  lacked  what  Gilder  and 
Woodberry  lacked.  Once  in  a  while  he  made  a  stanza  that  ap 
proaches  lyric  distinction,  as,  perhaps,  in  this  final  one  of  "A 
Foolish  Wish": 

T  is  a  child's  longing,  on  the  beach  at  play  : 

"Before  I  go," 
He  begs  the  beckoning  mother,  "Let  we  stay 

One  shell  to  throw!" 

'T  is  coming  night  ;  the  great  sea  climbs  file 
Ah,  lei  me  tan  one  little  pebble  more, 


But  not  often  lines  so  inevitable.  His  power  came  largely  from 
the  beauty  and  purity  of  his  own  personality.  His  own  con 
ception  of  a  poem  was,  that  "coming  from  a  pure  and  rich 
nature,  it  shall  leave  us  purer  and  richer  than  it  found  us." 
Judged  by  such  a  standard,  Sfll  holds  a  high  place  among  the 
poets.  Nothing  that  he  has  written  but  leaves  us  purer  and 
richer  of  soul  and  more  serious  before  the  problems  of  life. 
Eight  or  ten  of  his  lyrics  for  a  long  time  undoubtedly  will  hold 
their  place  among  the  very  highest  pieces  of  American  reflective 
poetry. 

It  was  the  opinion  of  Edmund  Gosse  that  the  period  was  nota 
bly  deficient  in  serious  verse.*  No  statement  could  be  more  wide 
of  the  mark  ;  the  period  has  abounded  in  serious  poetry  and  its 
quality  has  been  high.  To  consider  in  detail  this  mass  of  poetry, 
however,  were  to  exceed  our  limits.  We  can  only  single  out 
one  here  and  there  a  little  more  notable  than  the  others  —  John 
Boyle  O'Reilly  (1&44-1890),  for  instance,  with  his  Celtic  fancy 
and  his  graphic  power  to  depict  life  in  the  Southern  Seas; 
Maurice  Francis  Egan  (1852  -  )  and  Lloyd  Mifflin  (1846- 
-  ),  makers  of  beautiful  and  thoughtful  sonnets;  S.  "Weir 
Mitchell  (1829-1914),  a  poet  of  rare  distinction  as  well  as  a 
novelist;  Frank  Dempster  Sherman  (1860-1916),  maker  of  mad 
rigals  and  joyous  lyrics;  Charles  Warren  Stoddard  (1825- 
1903),  whose  songs  have  a  lyric  quality  that  is  distinctive,  and 
Abram  Joseph  Ryan  (1839-1886),  a  beautiful  and  heroic  soul, 
who  had  he  written  but  a  single  lyric  would  occupy  a  high  place 

»  The  Poem*  of  Madison  Cairem.    VoL  L     Introduction. 


346  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

among  American  poets.     His  "The  Conquered  Banner "  was  the 
voice  of  a  people: 

Furl   that   Banner,   softly,  slowly! 
Treat  it  gently — it  is  holy — 

For  it  droops  above  the  dead. 
Touch  it  not — unfold  it  never — 
Let  it  droop  there,  furled  forever, 

For  its  people's  hopes  are  fled. 

VI 

The  two  most  prominent  younger  poets  of  the  South  were 
Robert  Burns  Wilson  (1850-1916)  and  Madison  Cawein  (1865- 
1914),  both  residents  of  Kentucky,  one  at  Frankfort,  the  other 
at  Louisville,  and  both  contemplative  Nature  poets  who  voiced 
but  little  the  spirit  of  their  period.  Of  the  two,  Wilson  un 
doubtedly  was  the  most  inspired  singer,  as  Cawein  was  the  most 
careful  observer  of  Nature. 

Of  Wilson  we  may  say  that  he  was  a  later  Thomas  Buchanan 
Read,  a  devotee  of  art,  a  painter  of  landscapes  and  portraits, 
whose  work  was  seen  in  many  distinctive  galleries,  and  in  ad 
dition  to  this  a  poet — most  pictorial  of  poets,  whose  stanzas  seem 
like  inscriptions  for  his  paintings.  When  the  lyrics  "When 
Evening  Cometh  On"  and  "June  Days"  appeared  in  Harper's 
in  1885,  it  was  felt  that  a  new  singer  had  come.  There  was  dis 
tinction  in  the  lines,  there  was  restraint,  there  was  more  than 
promise,  there  was  already  fulfilment.  One  feels  a  quality  in 
a  stanza  like  this  that  he  may  not  explain : 

Though   all   the   birds   be   silent — though 

The  fettered  stream's  soft  voice  be  still, 
And  on  the  leafless  bough  the  snow 

Be  rested,  marble-like  and  chill — 
Yet  will  the  fancy  build  from  these 

The  transient  but  well-pleasing  dream 
Of  leaf  and  bloom  among  the  trees, 

And  sunlight  glancing  on  the  stream. 

It  has  somehow  the  singing  quality  that  may  not  be  learned, 
that  may  not  be  taught.  Finer  still  when  there  is  joined  with  it 
graphic  power  that  arrests  and  pleases  the  eye,  and  pathos  that 
grips  hard  the  heart,  as  in  a  lyric  like  this: 


THE  LATER  POETS  347 

Such  is  the  death  the  soldier  dies: 
He  falls — the  column  speeds  away; 

Upon  the  dabbled  grass  he  lies, 
His  brave  heart  following1,  still,  the   fray. 

The  smoke-wraiths  drift  among  the  trees, 
The  battle  storms  along  the  hill; 

The  glint  of  distant  arms  he  sees; 
He  hears  his  comrades  shouting  still. 

A  glimpse  of  far-borne  flags,  that  fade 
And  vanish  in  the  rolling  din : 

He  knows  the  sweeping  charge  is  made, 
The  cheering  lines  are  closing  in. 

Unmindful  of  his  mortal  wound, 
He  faintly  calls  and  seeks  to  rise; 

But  weakness  drags  him  to  the  ground — 
Such  is  the  death  the  soldier  dies. 

Wilson's  poetic  product  was  small,  but  it  stands  distinctive. 

The  work  of  Cawein  has  been  far  more  widely  trumpeted.  He 
had  the  good  fortune  to  attract  the  attention  of  Howells  with 
his  first  book  and  to  be  commended  by  him  persistently  and  with 
no  uncertain  voice.  "There  is  much  that  is  expressive  of  the 
new  land,"  Howells  wrote  in  "The  Editor's  Study,"  "as  well 
as  of  the  young  life  in  its  richly  sensuous,  boldly  achieved  pieces 
of  color.  In  him  one  is  sensible  (or  seems  so)  of  something  dif 
ferent  from  the  beautiful  as  literary  New  England  or  literary 
New  York  conceived  it.  He  is  a  fresh  strain. " 10  He  deplored 
the  gorgeous  excesses  of  the  poems  and  the  touches  for  merely 
decorative  effect,  but  he  defended  them  as  the  natural  exuber 
ance  of  extreme  youth.  With  time  they  would  disappear:  un 
doubtedly  a  great  poet  had  arisen.  Thus  encouraged,  Cawein 
began  upon  a  poetic  career  that  in  single-hearted  devotion  to  the 
lyric  muse  has  been  equaled  only  by  Clinton  Scollard.  Before 
his  death  he  had  issued  more  than  twenty  volumes  of  lyrics  and 
his  collected  work  had  been  published  in  five  thick  volumes. 

The  final  estimate  of  the  poet  cannot  yet  be  written.  It  is  too 
soon,  but  even  now  one  may  venture  certain  predictions. 
Cawein  wrote  enormously  too  much,  and  he  wrote  all  too  often 
with  merely  literary  intent.  He  was  not  a  lyrist  born:  he  had 

10  Harper's  Monthly,  May,  1888. 


348  AMKK1CAN   LITKKATTKK  SINCE  1870 

little  ear  for  music,  and  he  blended  meters  and  made  rimes  seem 
ingly  with  the  eye  alone.  One  can  not  feel  that  a  passage  like 
this,  for  instance,  sang  itself  spontaneously: 

Seemed  that  she 

Led  me  along  a  flower-showered  lea 
Trammeled  with  puckered  pansy  and  the  pea; 
Where  poppies  spread  great  blood-red  stain  on  stain, 
So  gorged  with  sunlight  and  the  honied  rain 
Their  hearts  are  weary;  roses  lavished  beams 
Roses,  wherein  were  huddled  little  dreams 
That  laughed  coy,  sidewise  merriment,  like  dew 
Or  from  fair  fingers  fragrant  kisses  blew. 

There  is  a  straining  constantly  for  the  unusual  in  epithet,  a 
seeking  for  a  picturing  adjective  that  shall  give  verisimilitude 
in  an  utterly  new  way.  "The  songs  have  all  been  sung,"  he 
would  seem  to  argue,  "but  the  picturing  adjectives  have  not 
all  been  used  and  the  striking  conceits."  One  might  open  at 
random  for  an  illustration: 

Athwart  a  sky  of  brass  long  welts  of  gold; 
A  bullion  bulk  the  wide  Ohio  lies. 

Up  from  the  glimmering  east  the  full  moon  swung, 
A  golden  bubble  buoyed  zenithward. 

Between  the  pansy  fire  of  the  west, 
And  poppy  mist  of  moonrise  in  the  east, 
This  heartache  will  have  ceased. 

"It  is  as  if  we  had  another  Keats,"  says  Howells,  and  in  say 
ing  it  he  touches  the  fatal  weakness  of  the  poet.  There  is  lack 
of  virility  in  great  parts  of  his  work,  there  is  lack  of  definiteness 
and  of  vigor.  He  tells  nothing  new  and  he  adds  nothing  to  the 
old  by  his  telling.  Even  Baskerville  can  say,  "There  is  little 
or  no  Southern,  not  to  say  Kentucky,  atmosphere  in  Mr. 
Cawein's  poetry.  His  flowers  and  birds  and  rocks  and  trees  do 
not  appear  to  us  as  objects  of  the  rich,  warm  Southern  nature, 
lie  frequently  mentions  the  whole  register  of  flowers  and  birds 
in  his  poetry — almost,  we  might  say,  drags  them  into  his  de 
scriptions  by  force — but  he  has  not  created  a  warm,  genial, 
Southern  poetic  atmosphere  in  which  they  may  thrive."11 

11  Southern  Writers,  Vol.  II,  p.  355. 


THE  LATER  POETS  349 

Nevertheless,  it  is  only  in  his  Nature  poetry  that  he  is  at  all 
convincing.  He  can  paint  a  summer  noon,  or  a  summer  shower, 
and  he  can  detail  minutely  the  flowers  and  the  mosses  and  the 
birds  in  an  old  fence  corner  or  an  old  garden.  Pictures  like  this 
have,  undoubtedly,  a  certain  kind  of  value : 

Bubble-like  the  hollyhocks 

Budded,  burst,  and  flaunted  wide 
Gipsy  beauty  from  their  stocks; 

Morning-glories,  bubble-dyed, 
Swung  in  honey-hearted  flocks. 

Tawny  tiger-lilies  flung 

Doublets  slashed  with  crimson  on; 
Graceful  girl  slaves,  fair  and  young, 

Like  Circassians,  in  the  sun 
Alabaster  lilies  swung. 

Ah,  the  droning  of  the  bee 

In  his  dusty  pantaloons, 
Tumbling  in  the  fleurs-de-lis; 

In  the  drowsy  afternoons 
Dreaming  in  the  pink  sweet-pea. 

Always  is  he  heavy  with  adjectives,  profuse,  gorgeous;  always 
is  he  dreamy  and  remote.  One  turns  page  after  page  of  the 
thick  volumes  of  the  collected  lyrics  to  find  some  simple  human 
bit  that  came  hot  from  the  heart  of  a  poet,  some  stanza  that 
compels  quotation,  but  one  gets  lost  at  length  in  the  maze  of 
sweetness.  If  any  of  his  poems  are  to  outlast  their  generation 
it  will  be  some  of  the  Nature  pieces,  but  landscape  studies,  flower 
songs,  and  pretty  conceits  about  bees  and  birds  are  thin  ma 
terial  of  which  to  make  enduring  poetry. 

VII 

With  Eichard  Hovey  (1864-1900),  representative  of  the  poets 
of  the  second  generation  of  the  National  period,  our  survey 
closes.  Hovey  was  a  later  Lanier,  excited,  impetuous,  possessed 
by  poetry  until  it  ruled  all  his  thinking.  Like  Lanier,  he  was 
Gallic  of  temperament  rather  than  Teutonic.  He  read  enor 
mously — the  Elizabethans,  Tennyson,  Whitman,  the  pre- 
Raphaelites,  Dobson,  Kipling,  and  later,  in  France,  Paul  Ver- 
laine,  Maeterlinck,  Stephane  Mallarme,  and  all  the  later  symbol 
ists.  After  his  college  course  at  Dartmouth  he  was,  at  brief 


350  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

intervals,  theological  student,  newspaper  reporter,  actor,  lecturer 
in  Alcott's  Concord  school  of  philosophy,  and  in  his  last  year, 
like  Lanier,  professor  of  literature  in  one  of  the  larger  univer 
sities — Barnard  College,  New  York — yet  his  one  profession  all 
his  life  long  was  poetry.  His  facility  was  marvelous.  He 
wrote  an  elegy  of  purest  Greek  type  and  he  added  a  canto  to 
Don  Juan;  he  wrote  Arthurian  masques  and  dramas  and  then 
rollicking  Bohemian  songs  and  vers  de  societe. 

His  facility  was  his  weakness.  Like  Lanier  he  was  too  ex 
cited,  too  given  to  improvisation  and  the  blending  of  meters. 
His  dramatic  interludes  like  The  Quest  of  Merlin  and  Tahesin 
are  marvelous  in  their  workmanship,  their  mastery  of  all  the  in 
tricacies  of  prosody,  but  they  come  near  to  being  void  of  human 
interest.  Lanier  dominated  his  first  poem  The  Laurel  and  there 
are  echoes  of  Whitman  and  others  in  his  later  work.  He  ma 
tured  slowly.  At  his  death  he  had  arrived  at  a  point  where  there 
was  promise  of  creative  work  of  highest  distinction.  He  was 
breaking  from  his  Bohemianism  and  his  excited  Swinburnian 
music  and  was  touching  his  time.  His  definition  of  poetry 
makes  his  early  death  seem  like  a  tragedy.  Of  the  poet  he 
wrote,  "It  is  not  his  mission  to  write  elegant  canzonettas  for  the 
delectation  of  the  Sybaritic  dilettanti,  but  to  comfort  the  sor 
rowful  and  hearten  the  despairing,  to  champion  the  oppressed 
and  declare  to  humanity  its  inalienable  rights,  to  lay  open  to 
the  world  the  heart  of  man,  all  its  heights  and  depths,  all  its 
glooms  and  glories,  to  reveal  the  beauty  in  things  and  breathe 
into  his  fellows  a  love  of  it  and  so  a  love  of  Him  whose  mani 
festation  it  is.  ...  In  the  appointed  work  of  every  people,  the 
poets  have  been  the  leaders  and  pioneers."  12 

His  most  finished  work  is  his  elegy  on  the  death  of  Thomas 
William  Parsons,  Seaward,  which  at  times  has  a  lyric  quality 
that  brings  it  into  the  company  even  of  Adonais  and  Thyrsis. 
One  is  tempted  to  quote  more  than  a  single  stanza: 

Far,  far,  so  far,  the  crying  of  the  surf! 

Still,  still,  so  still,  the  water  in  the  grass! 
Here  on  the  knoll  the  crickets  in  the  turf 

And  one  bold  squirrel  barking,  seek,  alas! 
To  bring  the  swarming  summer  back  to  me. 

In  vain ;  my  heart  is  on  the  salt  morass 
Below,  that  stretches  to  the  sunlit  sea. 

12  Dartmouth  Magazine,  Vol.  XX,  p.  95. 


THE  LATER  POETS  351 

His  most  spontaneous  and  original  outbursts  are  doubtless  his 
Dartmouth  lyrics — a  series  distinctive  among  college  poetry, 
worthy  of  a  place  beside  Dr.  Holmes 's  Harvard  lyrics — and 
his  rollicking  convivial  songs  that  have  in  them  the  very  soul 
of  good  fellowship.  There  is  in  all  he  wrote  a  Whitman-like 
masculinity.  He  could  make  even  so  conventional  a  thing  as 
a  sonnet  a  thing  to  stir  the  blood  with : 

When  I  am  standing  on  a  mountain  crest, 

Or  hold  the  tiller  in  the  dashing-  spray, 
My  love  of  you  leaps  foaming  in  my  breast, 

Shouts  with  the  winds  and  sweeps  to  their  foray; 
My  heart  bounds  with  the  horses  of  the  sea, 

And  plunges  in  the  wild  ride  of  the  night, 
Flaunts  in  the  teeth  of  tempest  the  large  glee 

That  rides  out  Fate  and  welcomes  gods  to  flight. 
Ho,  love!     I  laugh  aloud  for  love  of  you, 

Glad  that  our  love  is  fellow  to  rough  weather; 
No  fretful  orchid  hot-housed  from  the  dew, 

But  hale  and  hearty  as  the  highland  heather, 
Rejoicing  in  the  wind  that  stings  and  thrills, 
Comrade  of  ocean,  playmate  of  the  hills. 

He  is  the  singer  of  men — of  Western  men,  red-blooded  and 
free — the  very  opposite  of  Cawein.  He  wrote  songs  to  be  sung 
in  barrack  rooms  and  at  college  reunions — songs  of  comradeship 
and  masculine  joy: 

Give  a  rouse,  then,  in  the  Maytime 

For  a  life  that  knows  no  fear! 
Turn  night-time  into  daytime 

With  the  sunlight  of  good  cheer! 
For  it 's  always  fair  weather 
When  good  fellows  get  together 
With  a  stein  on  the  table  and  a  good  song  ringing  clear. 

And  again  this 

Comrades,   give  a  cheer  to-night, 

For  the  dying  is  with  dawn ! 
Oh,  to  meet  the  stars  together, 
With  the  silence  coming  on! 
Greet  the  end 
As  a  friend  a  friend 
When  strong  men  die  together. 

His  Launcelot  and  Guenevere  cycle,  which  was  to  be  com 
plete  in  nine  dramas,  only  four  of  which  he  lived  to  finish, 


352  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

though  undoubtedly  the  best  was  yet  to  come,  has  in  it  enough 
of  strength  to  make  for  itself,  fragment  as  it  is,  a  high  place 
in  our  literature.  The  dramas  are  in  different  key  from  Ten 
nyson's.  In  the  Idyls  of  the  King  the  old  legend  is  domesti 
cated  and  the  table  round  is  turned  into  a  tea  table.  Hovey  in 
his  Marriage  of  Guenevere  and  The  Birth  of  Galahad  puts  virile 
power  into  his  knights,  makes  of  Launcelot  the  hero  of  the  cycle, 
and  gives  to  Guenevere  a  reality  that  is  Shakespearian.  Few  in 
deed  have  been  the  poets  of  the  younger  school  who  have  dared 
to  plan  on  so  grand  a  scale  or  to  venture  to  offer  something  new 
in  a  field  that  has  been  so  thoroughly  exploited. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

WILL  CARLETON.  (1845-1012.)  Poems,  1871;  Farm  Ballads,  1873; 
Farm  Legends,  1875;  Young  Folks9  Centennial  Rhymes,  187C;  Farm  Fes- 
tnals,  1881;  City  Ballads,  1885;  City  Legends,  1889;  City  Festivals,  1892; 
Rhymes  of  Our  Planet,  1895;  The  Old  Infant,  and  Similar  Stories,  1896; 
Songs  of  Two  Centuries,  11)02:  pm-ms  for  Young  Americans,  1906;  In  Old 
School  Days,  1907;  Drifted  In,  \L907. 

JOHN  JAMES  PIATT.  (1835-1917.)  Poems  of  Two  Friends  [with 
Howells],  1859;  The  Nests  at  Washington  [with  Sarah  Morgan  Piatt], 
1864;  Poems  in  Sunshine  and  Firelight,  1866;  Western  Windows  and 
Other  Poems,  1869;  Landmarks  and  Other  Poems,  1871;  Poems  of  House 
and  Home,  1879;  Penciled  Fly-Leaves  [prose],  1880;  Idyls  and  Lyrics  of 
the  Ohio  Valley,  1884;  The  Children  Out  of  Doors  [with  Mrs.  Pintt], 
1885;  At  the  Holy  Well,  1887;  A  Book  of  Gold,  1889;  Little  New-World 
Idyls,  1893;  The  Ghost's  Entry  and  Other  Poejns,  1895. 
'  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY.  (1849-1916.))  The  Old  Swimmin'-Hole, 
1883;  The  Boss  Girl  and  Other  Sketches,  1886;  Aftenchiles,  1887;  Pipes 
o'  Pan  at  Zekesbury,  1889;  Rhymes  of  Childhood  Days,  1890;  An  Old 
Sweetheart  of  Mine,  1891;  Old  Fashioned  Roses,  1891;  Neighborly  Poems 
on  Friendship,  Grief,  and  Farm  IAfe,  1891;  Flying  Islands  of  the  Night, 
1892;  Poems  Here  at  Howe,  ls!>.'5;  Poems  and  Yarns  [with  Edgar  Wilson 
Nyel,  1893;  Green  Fields  and  Running  Brooks,  1893;  Armasindy,  1894; 
The  Child  World,  1896;  Rulaiyat  of  Doc  Sifers,  1897;  Poems  and  Prose 
Sketches,  Homestead  Edition,  10  vols.,  1897;  Child  Rhymes,  1898;  Love- 
Lyrics,  1899;  Farm  Rhymes,  1901;  Book  of  Joyous  Children,  1902;  A 
Defective  Santa  Claus,  1904;  His  Pa's  Romance,  1904;  Out  to  Old  Aunt 
Mary's,  1904;  Songs  o'  Cheer,  1905;  While  the  Heart  Beats  Young,  1900; 
Morning,  1907;  The  Raggedy  Man,  1907;  The  Little  Orphant  Annie  Book, 
1908;  The  Boys  of  the  Old  Glee  Club,  1908;  Songs  of  Summer,  1908;  Old 
Schoolday  Romances,  1909;  The  Girl  I  Loved,  1910;  Squire  Hawkins's 
Story,  1910;  When  She  Was  About  Sixteen,  1911;  The  Lockerbie  Book, 
1911;  Down  Round  the  River  and  Other  Poems,  1911;  A  Summer's  Day 
and  Other  Poems,  1911;  When  the  Frost  Is  on  the  Punkin  and  Other 


THE  LATER  POETS  353 

Poems,  1911;  All  the  Year  Round,  1912;  Knee  Deep  in  June  and  Other 
Poems,  1912;  The  Prayer  Perfect  and  Other  Poems,  1912;  Good-bye,  Jim, 
1913;  A  Song  of  Long  Ago,  1913;  He  and  I,  1913;  When  My  Dreams 
Come  True,  1913;  The  Rose,  1913;  Her  Beautiful  Eyes,  1913;  Away,  1913; 
Do  They  Miss  Me?  1913;  The  Riley  Baby  Book,  1913;  Biographical  Edi 
tion  of  the  Works  of  James  Whitcomb  Riley.  Complete  Works.  1913. 
\  EUGENE  FIELD.  (1850-1896.)  Tribune  Primer,  1882;  Culture's  Gar 
land,  Being  Memoranda  of  the  Gradual  Rise  of  Literature,  Art,  Music,  and 
Society  in  Chicago  and  Other  Western  Ganglia,  1887;  A  Little  Book  of 
Western  Verse,  1889,  1890;  A  Little  Book  of  Profitable  Tales,  1889,  1890; 
With  Trumpet  and  Drum,  1892;  Second  Book  of  Verse,  1893;  Echoes  from 
the  Sabine  Farm  [with  Roswell  M.  Field],  1893;  The  Holy  Cross  and 
Other  Tales,  1893;  Love  Songs  of  Childhood,  1894;  The  Love  Affairs  of 
a  Bibliomaniac,  The  House,  Songs  and  Other  Verse,  Second  Book  of  Tales, 
published  posthumously  in  the  Sabine  edition;  The  Works  of  Eugene 
Field.  Sabine  Edition.  Ten  vols.  1896.  The  Poems  of  Eugene  Field, 
Complete  Editions.  One  volume.  1910.  Eugene  Field,  A  Study  in  Hered 
ity  and  Contradictions.  Slason  Thompson.  Two  volumes.  1901. 

HENRY  CUYLEB  BUNNER.  (1855-1896.)  A  Woman  of  Honor,  1883; 
Airs  from  Arcady,  and  Elsewhere,  1884;  In  Partnership:  Studies  in  Story 
telling  [with  James  Brander  Matthews],  1884;  Midge,  1886;  Story  of  a 
New  York  House,  1887;  Short  Sixes:  Stories  to  Be  Read  While  the  Candle 
Burns,  1890;  Zadoc  Pine,  and  Other  Stories,  1891;  Rowen:  Second-Crop 
Songs,  1892;  Made  in  France:  French  Tales  Told  with  a  U.  S.  Twist, 
1893;  More  Short  Sixes,  1895;  Love  in  Old  Cloathes,  and  Other  Stories, 
1896. 

EMMA  LAZARUS.  (1849-1887.)  Poems  and  Translations,  1866;  Ad- 
metus,  1871;  Alide:  a  Romance,  1874;  The  Spagnoletto:  a  Play,  1876; 
Heine's  Poems  and  Ballads  [a  translation],  1881;  Songs  of  a  Semite, 
1882;  Poems  of  Emma  Lazarus,  1888. 

CELIA  THAXTER.  (1836-1894.)  Poems,  1872;  Among  the  Isles  of 
Shoals,  1873;  Drift-iveed:  Poems,  1878;  Poems  for  Children,  1883;  The 
Cruise  of  the  Mystery,  and  Other  Poems,  1886;  An  Island  Garden,  1894; 
Poems,  Appledore  Edition.  Edited  by  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  1896;  Letters 
of  Celia  Thaxter,  1895. 

EDITH   M.    THOMAS.      (1854 .)     A    New    Year's    Masque,    1884;    The 

Round  Year,  1886;  Lyrics  and  Sonnets,  1887;  The  Inverted  Torch,  1890; 
Fair  Shadow  Land,  1893;  In  Sunshine  Land,  1894;  In  the  Young  World, 
1895;  Winter  Swalloic;  with  Other  Verse,  1896;  Dancers  and  Other 
Legends  and  Lyrics,  1903;  Cassia,  and  Other  Verse,  1905;  Children  of 
Christmas,  and  Others,  1907;  Guest  at  the  Gate,  1909. 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER.  (1844-1909.)  The  New  Day,  1875;  The 
Celestial  Passion,  1878;  Lyrics,  1878;  The  Poet  and  His  Master,  and 
Other  Poems,  1878;  Lyrics  and  Other  Poems,  1885;  Poems,  1887;  Two 
Worlds,  and  Other  Poems,  1891;  Great  Remembrance,  and  Other  Poems, 
1893;  Five  Books  of  Song,  1894;  For  the  Country,  1897;  In  Palestine 
and  Other  Poems,  1898;  Poems  and  Inscriptions,  1901;  A  Christmas 
Wreath.  1903;  In  the  Heights,  1905;  Book  of  Music,  1906;  Fire  Divine, 


354  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

1907;  Poems,  Household  Edition,  1908;  Lincoln  the  Leader,  1909;  Grovet 
Cleveland,  1910. 

EDWARD  ROLAND  SILL.  (1841-1887.)  The  Hermitage  and  Other  Poems, 
1867;  Venus  of  Milo,  and  Other  Poems,  1883;  Poems,  1887;  The  Hermit 
age,  and  Later  Poems,  1889;  Christmas  in  California:  a  Poem,  1898; 
Hermione,  and  Other  Poems,  1899;  Prose,  1900;  Poems,  special  edition, 
1902;  Poems,  Household  Edition,  1906;  The  Life  of  Edward  Rowland  Sill, 
by  VV.  B.  Parker,  1915. 

ROBERT  P.IKNS  WILSON.  (1850-1916.)  Life  aid  Lore,  1887;  Chant  of 
a  Woodland  Spirit,  1894;  The  Shadoics  of  the  Trees,  1898;  Until  thr  Day 
Break  [a  novel],  1900. 

MADISON  JULIUS  CAWEIN.  (1865-1914.)  Blooms  of  the  Berry,  1887; 
The  Triumph  of  Music  and  Other  Lyrics,  1888;  Accolon  of  Gaul  and  Other 
Poems,  1889;  Lyrics  and  Idyls,  1890;  Days  and  Dreams,  1891;  Poems  of 
Mature  and  Love,  1893;  Intuitions  of  the  Beautiful,  1895;  White  Snake 
and  Other  Poems,  from  the  German,  1895;  Garden  of  Dreams,  1896;  Un 
dertones,  1896;  Shapes  and  Shadows,  1898;  Myth  and  Romance,  a  Book 
Of  \  ,rses,  1899;  One  Day  and  Another,  1901;  Weeds  by  the  Wall,  1901; 
A  Voice  on  the  Wind  and  Other  Poems,  1902;  Vale  of  Tempe;  Poems, 
1905;  In  Prose  and  Verse,  1906;  Poems,  5  volumes,  1908;  Shadow  Garden 
[a  Phantasy]  and  Other  Plays,  1910;  So  Many  Ways,  1911. 

RICHARD  HOVEY.  (1864-1900.)  The  Laurel:  an  Ode,  1889;  Launcelot 
and  Guenevere:  a  Poem  in  Dramas,  1891;  Seaward:  an  Elegy  on  the 
Death  of  Thomas  William  Parsons,  1893;  Songs  from  Vagabondia  [with 
Bliss  Carman],  1894;  More  Songs  from  Vagabondia  [with  Bliss  Carman], 
1896;  The  Quest  of  Merlin,  1898;  The  Marriage  of  Guenevere,  1898;  The 
Birth  of  Galahad,  1898;  Along  the  Trail:  Book  of  Lyrics,  1898;  Last 
Songs  from  Vagabondia  [with  Bliss  Carman],  1900;  Taliesin,  1900; 
Along  the  Trail,  1907;  Launcelot  and  Guenevere:  a  Poem  in  Dramas,  5 
vols.,  1907;  To  the  End  of  the  Trail,  1908. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


THE   TRIUMPH   OF   THE   SHORT   STORY 

Voluminous  as  may  seem  the  poetry  of  the  period  when  viewed 
by  itself,  it  sinks  into  insignificance  when  viewed  against  the 
mass  of  prose  that  was  contemporaneous  with  it.  Overwhelm 
ingly  was  it  an  age  of  prose  fiction.  He  who  explores  it  emerges 
with  the  impression  that  he  has  been  threading  a  jungle  chaotic 
and  interminable.  To  chart  it,  to  find  law  and  tendency  in  it, 
seems  at  first  impossible.  For  a  generation  or  more  every 
writer  seems  to  have  had  laid  upon  him  a  necessity  for  narra 
tion.  Never  before  such  widespread  eagerness  to  din  tales  into 
the  ears  of  a  world. 

It  was  an  age  of  brief  fiction — this  fact  impresses  one  first  of 
all.  The  jungle  growth  was  short.  Not  half  a  dozen  writers 
in  the  whole  enormous  group  confined  themselves  to  novels  of 
length ;  the  most  distinctive  fictional  volumes  of  the  period : 
The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  Old  Creole  Days,  In  the  Tennessee 
Mountains,  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus,  In  Ole  Virginia,  A  New 
England  Nun,  Deephaven,  Main-Traveled  Roads,  Flute  and  Vio- 
Im,  and  the  like,  were  collections  of  tales.  One  may  venture  to 
call  the  period  the  age  of  the  short  story,  or  more  accurately, 
perhaps,  the  age  of  short-breathed  work.  Everywhere  literature 
in  small  parcels.  In  January,  1872,  the  North  American  Re 
view,  guardian  of  the  old  traditions,  thought  the  conditions  se 
rious  enough  to  call  for  earnest  protest : 

A  new  danger  has  recently  shown  itself.  .  .  .  The  great  demand  on 
all  sides  is  for  short  books,  short  articles,  short  sketches;  no  elaborate 
essays,  no  complete  monographs,  are  wanted  .  .  .  condensed  thought, 
brief  expression,  the  laconian  method  everywhere.  .  .  .  The  volume 
sinks  into  an  article,  the  article  dwindles  to  an  item  to  conciliate  the 
demands  of  the  public. 

That  this  shortness  of  unit  was  a  sign  of  weakness,  we  to-day 
by  no  means  concede.  It  was  rather  a  sign  of  originality,  the 

355 


356  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

symptom  of  a  growing  disregard  for  British  methods  and  British 
opinion.  The  English  genius  always  has  been  inclined  to  pon- 
derousness — to  great,  slow-moving  novels,  to  elaborate  essays 
that  get  leisurely  under  way,  to  romances  that  in  parts  are 
treatises  and  in  parts  are  histories,  everywhere  to  solidity  and 
deliberateness  of  gait.  The  North  American  Review  protest  was 
a  British  protest ;  it  was  the  protest  of  conservatism  against  what 
to-day  we  can  see  was  the  new  spirit  of  America.  The  American 
people  from  the  first  had  been  less  phlegmatic,  less  conservative, 
than  the  English.  There  were  climatic  influences,  it  may  be; 
there  was  surely  a  spirit  of  intensity  everywhere  that  made  for 
short  efforts.  The  task  of  subduing  in  a  single  century  a  raw 
continent  produced  a  people  intolerant  of  the  leisurely  and  the 
long  drawn  out.  Poe  perceived  the  tendency  early.  In  a  letter 
to  Professor  Charles  Anthon  he  wrote: 

Before  quitting  the  Messenger  I  saw,  or  fancied  I  saw,  through  a 
ii.i;  and  dim  vista  the  brilliant  field  for  ambition  which  a  magazine  of 
bold  and  noble  aims  presented  to  him  who  should  successfully  estab 
lish  it  in  America.  I  perceived  that  the  country,  from  its  very  con 
stitution,  could  not  fail  of  affording  in  a  few  years  a  larger  propor 
tionate  amount  of  readers  than  any  upon  earth.  I  perceived  that  the 
whole  energetic,  busy  spirit  of  the  age  tended  wholly  to  magazine*  lit 
erature — to  the  curt,  the  terse,  the  well  timed  and  the  readily  diffused, 
in  preference  to  the  old  forms  of  verbose  and  ponderous  and  inac 
cessible. 

This  far-sightedness  made  of  Poe  the  father  of  the  American 
type  of  short  story.  Irving  undoubtedly  had  sown  the  earliest 
seeds,  but  Irving  was  an  essayist  and  a  sketch-writer  rather 
than  a  maker  of  short  stories  in  the  modern  sense.  It  was  Poe's 
work  to  add  art  to  the  sketch — plot  structure,  unity  of  impres 
sion,  verisimilitude  of  details,  matter-of-factness,  finesse — and, 
like  Hawthorne,  to  throw  over  it  the  atmosphere  of  his  own  pe 
culiar  personality.  That  he  evolved  the  form  deliberately  can 
not  be  doubted.  In  his  oft-quoted  review  of  Hawthorne's  tales 
he  laid  down  what  may  be  considered  as  the  first  rules  for  short 
story  writing  ever  formulated.  1 1  is  theories  that  all  art  is 
short-breathed,  that  a  long  poem  is  a  tour  de  force  against  na 
ture,  and  that  the  unit  of  measure  in  fiction  is  the  amount  that 
may  be  read  with  undiminished  pleasure  at  a  single  sitting,  are 
too  well  known  to  dwell  upon. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          357 

But  the  short  story  of  the  mid-century,  even  in  its  best  speci 
mens,  was  an  imperfect  thing.  In  Hawthorne 's  tales  the  quality 
of  the  sketch  or  the  essay  is  always  discernible.  All  of  Poe's 
tales,  and  Hawthorne's  as  well,  lack  vigor  of  characterization, 
sharpness  of  outline,  swiftness  of  movement.  "The  Gold  Bug," 
for  instance,  has  its  climax  in  the  middle,  is  faulty  in  dialect,  is 
utterly  deficient  in  local  color,  and  is  worked  out  with  char 
acters  as  lifeless  as  mere  symbols. 

The  vogue  of  the  form  was  increased  enormously  by  the  an 
nuals  which  figured  so  largely  in  the  literary  history  of  the  mid- 
century,  by  the  increasing  numbers  of  literary  pages  in  weekly 
newspapers,  and  by  the  growing  influence  of  the  magazines. 
The  first  volume  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  (1857)  had  an  aver 
age  of  three  stories  in  each  number.  But  increase  in  quantity 
increased  but  little  the  quality.  The  short  story  of  the  annual 
was,  for  the  most  part,  sentimental  and  over-romantic.  Even 
the  best  work  of  the  magazines  is  colorless  and  ineffective  when 
judged  by  modern  standards.  Undoubtedly  the  best  stories 
after  Poe  and  Hawthorne  and  before  Harte  are  Fitz-James 
O'Brien's  ''Diamond  Lens,"  1858,  and  "What  Was  It?"  1859, 
Edward  Everett  Kale's  "The  Man  Without  a  Country,"  1863, 
and  "The  Brick  Moon,"  1869,  and  Thomas  Wentworth  Hig- 
girison's  "The  Haunted  Window,"  1867.  Well  wrought  they 
are  for  the  most  part,  unusual  in  theme,  and  telling  in  effect, 
yet  are  they  open  nevertheless  to  the  same  criticisms  which  we 
have  passed  upon  Poe. 

,  The  short  story  in  its  later  form  dates  from  Harte 's  ' '  The  Luck 
of  Roaring  Camp."  Harte  added  reality,  sharpness  of  outline, 
I  vividness  of  setting,  vigor  of  characterization.  The  new  period 
'  demanded  actuality.  The  writer  must  speak  with  authority ;  he 
must  have  been  a  part  of  what  he  describes;  he  must  have  seen 
with  his  own  eyes  and  he  must  reproduce  with  a  verisimilitude 
that  grips  the  reader  and  hastens  him  on  as  if  he  himself  were 
a  participant  in  the  action.  There  must  be  at  every  point  sense 
of  actuality,  and,  moreover,  strangeness — new  and  unheard-of 
types  of  humanity,  uncouth  dialects,  peculiar  environments.  It 
was  far  more  concentrated  than  the  mid-century  work,  but  it 
was  much  more  given  to  general  description  and  background  ef 
fects  and  impressionistic  characterization. 

In  the  mid-eighties  came  the  perfecting  of  the  form,  the  mold- 


358  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

ing  of  the  short  story  into  a  finished  work  of  art.  Now  was 
demanded  compression,  nervous  rapidity  of  movement,  sharp 
ness  of  characterization,  singleness  of  impression,  culmination, 
finesse — a  studied  artistry  that  may  be  compared  with  even 
the  best  work  of  the  French  school  of  the  same  period.  Stories 
like  those  of  Aldrich,  Stockton,  Bunner,  Garland,  Allen,  Bierce, 
Grace  Kin-,  Mrs.  Chopin,  Stephen  Crane,  and  Frank  Norris, 
from  the  standpoint  of  mere  art  at  least,  come  near  to  per 
fection. 

The  decline  of  the  short  story,  its  degeneration  into  a  jour 
nalistic  form,  the  substitution  all  too  often  of  smartness,  para 
dox,  sensation,  for  truth — all  this  is  a  modern  instance  outside 
the  limits  prescribed  for  our  study. 


After  Harte  and  the  early  local-colorists  the  next  to  develop 
the  short  story  was  Frank  R.  Stockton.  No  writer  of  the  period 
has  been  more  variously  estimated  and  labeled.  By  some  critics 
he  has  been  rated  as  a  mere  humorist,  by  others  as  a  novelist, 
by  still  others  as  a  writer  of  whimsicalities  in  a  class  by  himself. 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  his  personality  was  so  interfused 
with  his  writings  that  the  generation  who  knew  and  loved  him 
were  too  kind  in  their  judgments.  Behind  his  every  story  they 
saw  the  genial,  whimsical  creator  and  they  laughed  even  before 
they  began  to  read.  But  a  new  generation  has  arrived  to  whom 
Stockton  is  but  a  name  and  a  set  of  books,  and  it  is  becoming 
more  and  more  evident  now  that  very  much  that  he  wrote  was 
ephemeral.  To  this  generation  he  is  known  as  the  author  of  a 
single  short  story,  or  perhaps  three  or  four  short  stories,  of  a 
type  that  has  its  own  peculiar  flavor. 

Stockton  was  born  in  Philadelphia  in  1834,  was  educated  in 
the  high  school  there,  and  then,  at  the  request  of  his  father, 
learned  the  trade  of  wood  engraving.  But  his  inclinations  were 
literary,  and  he  was  soon  an  editorial  worker  on  his  brother's 
newspaper.  Later  he  joined  the  staff  of  Hearth  and  Home  in 
NV\v  York,  then  became  connected  with  the  new  Scribner's 
Monthly,  and  finally  became  assistant  editor  of  St.  Nicholas. 

The  wide  popularity  of  his  stories  induced  him  at  length  to 
withdraw  from  editorial  work  to  devote  his  whole  time  to  his 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          359 

writings.  He  became  exceedingly  productive :  after  his  fiftieth 
year  he  published  no  fewer  than  thirty  volumes. 

To  understand  Stockton's  contribution  to  the  period  one  must 
bear  in  mind  that  he  adopted  early  the  juvenile  story  as  his 
form  of  expression,  and  that  his  first  book,  Ting-a-ling  Stories, 
appeared  four  years  after  Alice  in  Wonderland.  When,  at  the 
age  of  forty-eight  he  gained  general  recognition  with  his  The 
Lady,  or  the  Tiger?  he  had  published  nine  books,  eight  of  them 
juveniles.  The  fact  is  important.  He  approached  literature  by 
the  Wonderland  gate  and  he  never  wandered  far  from  that 
magic  entrance.  After  his  short  stories  had  made  him  famous 
he  continued  to  write  juveniles,  adapting  them,  however,  to  his 
new  audience  of  adult  readers.  He  may  be  summed  up  as  a 
maker  of  grown-up  juveniles,  a  teller,  as  it  were,  of  the  adven 
tures  of  an  adult  Alice  in  Wonderland. 

All  of  his  distinctive  work  was  short.  Rudder  Grange,  which 
first  made  him  at  all  known,  was  a  series  of  sketches,  the  hu 
morous  adventures  of  a  newly  married  couple,  the  humor  con 
sisting  largely  of  incongruous  situations.  Even  his  so-called 
novels,  like  The  Casting  Away  of  Mrs.  Leeks  and  Mrs.  Aleshine 
and  its  sequel  The  Dusantes,  are  but  a  series  of  episodes  joined 
together  as  loosely  as  Alice's  well-known  adventures.  Plot  there 
is  really  none.  Characterization,  however,  there  is  to  a  degree : 
the  two  women  do  carry  their  provincial  Yankee  personalities 
and  the  atmosphere  of  their  little  home  village  into  whatever 
amazing  environment  they  may  find  themselves,  but  one  can 
not  say  more. 

There  seems  on  the  author's  part  a  constant  endeavor  in  all 
of  his  work  to  invent  incongruous  situation  and  preposterous 
suggestion,  and  a  determination  to  present  this  topsy-turvy 
world  gravely  arid  seriously  as  if  it  were  the  most  commonplace 
thing  in  the  world.  He  makes  it  plausible  by  the  Defoe  method 
of  multiplying  minor  details  and  little  realistic  touches  until 
the  reader  is  thrown  completely  off  his  guard.  For  instance, 
in  the  novel  The  Dusantes  the  coach  in  which  the  party  is  trav 
eling  is  overtaken  by  night  in  the  high  mountains  and  before 
morning  is  completely  buried  by  a  great  snow  storm.  The  fol 
lowing  day,  after  they  had  hollowed  out  a  room  for  themselves 
in  the  snow,  this  adventure  befalls  them: 


360  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

I  heard  a  low  crunching  sound  on  one  side  of  me,  and,  turning  my 
head,  I  saw  in  the  wall  of  my  excavation  opposite  to  the  stage  coach 
and  at  a  distance  of  four  or  five  feet  from  the  ground  an  irregular  hole 
in  the  snow,  about  a  foot  in  diameter,  from  which  protruded  the  head 
of  a  man.  This  head  was  wrapped,  with  the  exception  of  the  face,  in 
a  brown  woolen  comforter.  The  features  were  those  of  a  man  of 
about  fifty,  a  little  sallow  and  thin,  without  beard,  whiskers,  or  mus 
tache,  although  the  cheeks  and  chin  were  darkened  with  a  recent 
growth. 

The  astounding  apparition  of  this  head  projecting  itself  from  the 
snow  wall  of  my  cabin  utterly  paralyzed  me,  so  that  I  neither  moved 
nor  spoke,  but  remained  crouching  by  the  fire,  my  eyes  fixed  upon  the 
head.  It  smiled  a  little,  and  then  spoke. 

"Could  you  lend  me  a  small  iron  pot?"  it  said. 

Another  coach,  it  seems,  had  likewise  been  snowed  under,  and 
the  chief  occupant  had  tried  to  tunnel  his  way  out  for  help,  with 
the  result  as  recorded.  The  passage  is  typical.  It  illustrates  a 
mannerism  that  mars  all  his  work.  He  is  not  telling  a  culminat 
ing  story:  he  is  adding  incongruity  to  incongruity  for  merely 
humorous  effect,  and  after  a  time  the  reader  tires.  It  seems 
at  length  as  if  he  were  straining  at  every  point  to  bring  in  some 
thing  totally  unexpected  and  preposterous.  In  short  compass 
the  device  succeeded,  but  incongruity  may  not  rule  longer  than 
the  moment. 

It  is  to  Stockton's  short  stories,  then,  that  we  are  to  look  for 
his  distinctive  work.  Of  one  story  we  need  say  little.  The  sen 
sation  it  made  has  few  parallels  in  the  history  of  the  period  and 
the  influence  it  excited  was  undoubtedly  great.  Aldrich  sev 
eral  years  earlier  had  told  a  story  which  depended  for  its  effect 
upon  a  startling  closing  sentence,  but  Marjorie  Daw  attracted 
little  attention  as  compared  with  the  tremendous  vogue  of  The 
Lady,  or  the  Tiger?  It  was  a  step  in  the  direction  of  more 
elaborate  art.  It  began  to  be  realized  that  the  short  story  writer 
had  the  reader  at  his  mercy.  It  was  recognized  that  it  was  a 
part  of  his  art  to  startle,  to  perplex,  to  tantalize,  to  lead  into 
hidden  pitfalls,  yet  always  in  a  way  to  please  and  to  stimulate. 
From  Marjorie  Daw  and  The  Lady,  or  the  Tiger?  it  was  but  a 
step  to  the  jugglery  of  0.  Henry. 

None  of  Stockton's  other  short  stories  ever  reached  the  vogue 
of  this  lucky  hit,  but  many  of  them  surpass  it  in  all  the  requisites 
of  art.  "Negative  Gravity, "  "The  Transferred  Ghost,"  "The 
Remarkable  Wreck  of  the  Thomas  Hyke,"  and  "The  Late  Mrs. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          361 

Null"  may  be  cited  as  examples.  In  all  of  them  the  art  con 
sists  in  perfect  naturalness,  in  an  exquisite  simplicity  of  style, 
and  in  topsy-turvyness  made  within  short  compass  completely 
plausible.  We  are  led  into  a  world  of  negative  gravity  where 
everything  goes  completely  by  opposites.  In  "The  Transferred 
Ghost "  we  are  gravely  assured  that  Mr.  Hinckman,  at  the  point 
of  death,  has  a  ghost  appointed  to  haunt  his  late  residence.  He 
does  not  die,  however,  and  as  a  result  the  poor  ghost  is  haunted 
by  the  living  Mr.  Hinckman  until  it  is  nearly  frightened  out  of 
its  existence.  And  so  skilful  is  the  author  that  the  story  be 
comes  convincing. 

Very  much  of  the  success  of  the  work  depends  upon  the  ele 
ment  that  we  call  style.  Stockton  indeed  is  one  of  the  half 
dozen  prose  writers  of  the  period  to  whom  may  be  applied  the 
now  old-fashioned  term  stylist.  There  is  grace  and  character  in 
his  every  sentence,  a  dignity  despite  the  whimsical  content  that 
never  descends  to  vulgarity  or  to  what  James  has  termed  "  news 
paperese."  Always  is  he  clear,  always  is  he  simple — his  early 
experience  with  juveniles  taught  him  that — and  always  is  he 
perfectly  natural.  Moreover,  to  all  this  he  adds  a  delightfully 
colloquial  attitude  toward  his  reader — a  familiar  personal  tone 
at  times  that  is  like  nothing  so  much  as  Charles  Lamb. 

He  was  an  anomaly  in  the  period.  In  an  age  of  localized 
fiction  he  produced  work  as  unlocalized  as  is  Carroll's  Through 
the  Looking  Glass;  instead  of  using  dialect  and  curious  provincial 
types,  he  dealt  always  with  refined  gentle  folk  amid  surround 
ings  that  seem  to  have  little  to  do  with  the  actual  solid  earth; 
in  a  period  that  demanded  reality  and  fullness  of  life  he  wrote 
little  that  touches  any  of  the  real  problems  of  his  time  or  that  has 
in  it  anything  to  grip  or  even  to  move  the  reader :  even  his  mur 
ders  are  gentle  affairs.  There  are  no  moments  of  real  emotion : 
all  is  opera  bouffe;  all  is  cheery  and  whimsically  conceived. 

That  there  was  knowledge  of  the  human  heart  behind  his 
quaint  creations  undoubtedly  is  true.  The  Lady,  or  the  Tiger  f 
is  founded  on  a  subtle  study  of  humanity,  yet  even  as  one  says 
it  he  is  forced  to  admit  that  it  added  little  to  the  real  substance 
of  the  period.  He  was  content  to  be  a  mere  entertainer,  aware 
undoubtedly  that  the  entertainment  that  delights  one  generation 
all  too  often  is  obsolete  in  the  next. 


362  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

II 

The  appearance  of  "Monsieur  Motte"  in  the  New  Princeton 
Review  of  January,  1886,  marks  another  step  in  the  develop 
ment  of  the  short  story.  It  was  as  distinctively  French  in  its 
atmosphere  and  its  art  as  if  it  had  been  a  translation  from  Mau 
passant,  yet  it  was  as  originally  and  peculiarly  American  as 
even  Madame  Delphine,  which  in  so  many  ways  it  resembles. 
Its  English,  which  is  Gallic  in  idiom  and  in  incisive  brevity; 
its  atmosphere  quivering  with  passion;  its  characters  whimsical, 
impulsive,  exquisite  of  manners;  its  dainty  suggestions  of  fem 
ininity,  as  in  the  case  of  the  little  Creole  maiden  Marie  Modeste 
or  the  stately  Madame  Lareveillere ;  its  hints  of  a  rich  and  tragic 
background,  and  its  startling  "Marjorie  Daw"  culmination — 
there  is  no  Monsieur  Motte ;  Monsieur  Motte  is  only  the  pathetic 
negresse  Marcelite — all  this  was  French,  but  the  background 
was  old  Creole  New  Orleans,  and  it  was  drawn  by  one  who  pro 
fessed  herself  a  severe  realist,  or,  to  quote  her  own  words,  "I 
am  not  a  romanticist,  I  am  a  realist  a  la  mode  de  la  Nouvelle- 
Orleans.  I  have  never  written  a  line  that  was  not  realistic,  but 
our  life,  our  circumstances,  the  heroism  of  the  men  and  women 
that  surrounded  my  early  horizon — all  that  was  romantic.  I 
had  a  mind  very  sensitive  to  romantic  impressions,  but  critical  as 
to  their  expression." 

The  writer  was  Grace  Elizabeth  King,  daughter  of  a  prom 
inent  barrister  of  New  Orleans,  herself  with  a  strain  of  Creole 
blood,  educated  at  the  fashionable  Creole  pension  of  the  Mes- 
dames  Cenas — the  Institute  St.  Denis  of  "Monsieur  Motte"  and 
"Pupasse" — bilingual  like  all  the  circle  in  which  she  moved, 
and  later  a  resident  for  some  two  years  in  France — no  wonder 
that  from  her  stories  breathes  a  Gallic  atmosphere  such  as  we 
find  in  no  other  work  of  the  period.  Three  more  episodes,  each 
a  complete  short  story — "On  the  Plantation,"  "The  Drama  of  an 
Evening,"  and  "The  Marriage  of  Marie  Modeste" — she  added  to 
her  first  story,  bits  of  art  that  Flaubert  would  have  delighted  in, 
and  issued  them  in  1888  under  the  title  Monsieur  Motte.  She 
followed  it  with  Earthlings,  which  she  has  never  republished, 
from  Lippincott's  Magazine,  and  with  other  stories  and  sketches 
contributed  to  Harper's  and  the  Century  that  later  appeared  as 
Tales  of  a  Time  and  Place  and  Balcony  Stories. 

The  impulse  to  write  fiction  came  to  Miss  King  from  a  con- 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          363 

viction  that  Cable  had  done  scant  justice  to  the  real  Creoles  of 
Louisiana.  She  would  depict  those  exclusive  circles  of  old 
Creole  life  that  she  herself  had  known  in  her  early  childhood, 
circles  almost  exclusively  French  with  just  a  touch,  perhaps,  of 
Spanish.  She  would  differ  from  Cable  as  Sarah  Orne  Jewett 
differs  from  Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman  in  her  pictures  of  New 
England  life.  Her  sketches,  therefore,  are  more  minutely 
drawn,  more  gentle,  more  suggestive  of  the  richness  and  beauty 
of  a  vanished  age  that  was  Parisian  and  Bourbon  in  its  bril 
liancy.  She  excels  in  her  pictures  of  old  Mesdames,  relics  of 
the  old  regime,  drawn  by  the  lightest  of  touches  and  suggestions 
until  they  are  intensely  alive,  like  Bon  Maman  or  like  Madame 
Josephine  in  "A  Delicate  Affair.".  A  hint  or  a  suggestion  is 
made  to  do  the  work  of  a  page  of  analysis.  Note  a  passage 
like  this : 

She  played  her  game  of  solitaire  rapidly,  impatiently,  and  always 
won;  for  she  never  hesitated  to  cheat  and  get  out  of  a  tight  place,  or 
into  a  favorable  one,  cheating  with  the  quickness  of  a  flash,  and  for 
getting  it  the  moment  afterward. 

Mr.  Horace  was  as  old  as  she,  but  he  looked  much  younger,  although 
his  dress  and  appearance  betrayed  no  evidence  of  an  effort  in  that 
direction.  Whenever  his  friend  cheated,  he  would  invariably  call  her 
attention  to  it;  and  as  usual  she  would  shrug  her  shoulders  and  say, 
"Bah !  Lose  a  game  for  a  card !"  and  pursue  the  conversation. 

All  her  feminine  creations  are  Gallic,  like  Marie  Modeste,  or, 
better  still,  the  vividly  drawn  Misette  in  Earthlings,  volatile, 
lovable — impossible.  She  is  always  at  her  best  while  depicting 
these  whimsical,  impracticable,  tropic  femininites;  she  makes 
them  not  so  bewitching  as  does  Cable,  but  she  makes  them  more 
real  and  more  intensely  alive. 

Her  earlier  stories  are  the  best,  judged  merely  as  short  stories. 
As  she  continued  her  work  she  discovered  more  and  more  the 
wealth  of  romantic  material  in  the  annals  of  the  old  city,  es 
pecially  in  the  studies  of  Charles  Gayarre  (1805-1895),  great 
est  of  Southern  historians.  The  influence  of  his  work  upon  her 
becomes  increasingly  evident.  Her  stories  grew  into  sketches. 
Balcony  Stories  are  not  so  much  stories  as  they  are  realistic 
sketches  of  social  conditions  in  New  Orleans  after  the  Recon 
struction.  More  and  more  she  wrote  studies  in  Creole  atmos 
pheres,  impressions  of  picturesque  places  and  persons  after  the 


364  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

manner  of  Hearn,  until  at  length  she  abandoned  fiction  alto 
gether  to  devote  herself  to  history.  In  the  period  when  histori 
cal  fiction  for  a  time  ruled  everything,  she  wrote  history  itself 
in  a  manner  that  was  as  graphic  and  as  picturesque  as  fiction. 
Perhaps  nothing  that  she  has  written  has  in  it  more  of  vitality 
than  her  history  of  New  Orleans  and  its  people.  It  is  possible 
that  her  final  place  is  to  be  with  the  historians  rather  than  with 
the  makers  of  fiction. 

In  the  technique  of  the  short  story  she  was  surpassed  by  a 
later  worker  in  Louisiana  materials,  Kate  Chopin  (1851-1904), 
some  of  whose  work  is  equal  to  the  best  that  has  been  produced 
in  France  or  even  in  America.  She  wrote  but  little,  two  vol 
umes  of  stories,  notably  Bayou  Folks,  containing  all  that  is  now 
accessible  of  her  shorter  work.  Many  of  her  sketches  and  stories 
have  never  been  republished  from  the  magazines. 

The  strength  of  Mrs.  Chopin's  work  came  partly  from  the 
strangeness  of  her  material — she  told  of  the  Grand  Pre  Acadians 
in  the  canebrakes  of  central  Louisiana — and  from  her  intimate 
knowledge  of  her  field,  but  it  came  more  from  what  may  be 
described  as  a  native  aptitude  for  narration  amounting  almost  to 
genius.  She  was  of  Celtic  temperament — her  father  was  a  Gal- 
way  County  Irishman  and  her  mother  was  of  mingled  French 
and  old  Virginian  stock.  Educated  in  the  Convent  of  the  Sa 
cred  Heart  at  St.  Louis,  married  at  nineteen  to  a  New  Orleans 
cotton  factor,  spending  fourteen  years  in  Louisiana,  the  last  four 
of  them  in  the  remote  hamlet  of  Cloutiersville  in  Natchitoches 
Parish,  "a  rambling  little  French  village  of  one  street,  with  the 
Catholic  church  at  one  end,  and  our  plantation  at  the  other,  and 
the  Red  River  flowing  through  everybody's  backyard,"  left  a 
widow  at  thirty-five  with  six  children — all  this  had  little  to  do 
with  the  making  of  literature.  Indeed,  until  her  return  to  St. 
Louis  a  year  after  her  bereavement,  she  had  never  even  thought 
of  writing.  She  began  almost  by  chance,  and,  succeeding  from 
the  first,  she  wrote  story  after  story  almost  without  effort  and 
wholly  without  study  of  narrative  art.  For  a  decade  her  work 
was  in  all  of  the  Northern  magazines,  then  five  years  before  her 
death,  discouraged  by  the  reception  of  her  novel  The  Awakening, 
she  became  silent. 

No  writer  of  the  period  was  more  spontaneously  and  inevit 
ably  a  story  teller.  There  is  an  ease  and  a  naturalness  about 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          365 

her  work  that  comes  from  more  than  mere  art.  She  seldom 
gave  to  a  story  more  than  a  single  sitting,  and  she  rarely  revised 
her  work,  yet  in  compression  of  style,  in  forbearance,  in  the 
massing  of  materials,  and  in  artistry  she  ranks  with  even  the 
masters  of  the  period.  A  story  like  "Desiree's  Baby,'7  with  its 
inevitableness  and  its  culminating  sentence  that  stops  for  an 
instant  the  reader's  heart,  is  well-nigh  perfect.  She  was  emo 
tional,  she  was  minutely  realistic,  and,  unlike  Grace  King,  used 
dialect  sometimes  in  profusion;  she  was  dramatic  and  even  at 
times  melodramatic,  yet  never  was  she  commonplace  or  ineffec 
tive.  She  had  command  at  times  of  a  pervasive  humor  and  a 
pathos  that  gripped  the  reader  before  he  was  aware,  for  behind 
all  was  the  woman  herself.  She  wrote  as  Dickens  wrote,  with 
abandonment,  with  her  whole  self.  There  is  art  in  her  work, 
but  there  is  more  than  art.  One  may  read  again  and  again  such 
bits  of  human  life  as  "Madame  Celestin's  Divorce":  it  is  the  art 
that  is  independent  of  time  and  place,  the  art  indeed  that  is  uni 
versal. 

Ill 

Of  a  type  the  direct  opposite  was  James  Lane  Allen,  who  was 
not  inspired  and  who  was  not  an  improvisatore.  To  Allen  fic 
tion  was  an  art  learned  with  infinite  patience.  He  was  years 
in  the  mastering  of  it,  years  in  which  he  studied  literature  with 
the  abandonment  of  a  Maupassant.  He  approached  it  deliber 
ately;  he  made  himself  the  most  scholarly  of  the  novelists  of  the 
period — graduate  and  graduate  student  of  Transylvania  Uni 
versity,  first  applicant  for  the  degree  of  doctor  of  philosophy  at 
Johns  Hopkins,  though  he  never  found  opportunity  for  resi 
dence,  teacher  for  years  of  languages,  and  then  professor  of 
Latin  and  higher  English  at  Bethany  College,  West  Virginia. 

The  circumstances  of  his  early  life  made  a  literary  career 
difficult.  He  had  been  born  on  a  small  Kentucky  plantation 
a  few  miles  out  of  Lexington,  miles  that  he  walked  daily  while 
gaining  his  education.  A  college  course  for  him  meant  toil  and 
sacrifice.  The  war  had  brought  poverty,  and  the  death  of  the 
father  imposed  new  burdens.  Like  Lanier,  he  was  forced  to 
teach  schools  when  he  would  have  studied  at  German  universi 
ties,  but,  like  Lanier,  he  somehow  had  caught  a  vision  of  litera 
ture  that  dominated  him  even  through  decades  of  seeming  hope 
lessness.  Few  have  had  to  fight  longer  for  recognition  and  few 


366  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

have  ever  worked  harder  to  master  the  art  with  which  they  were 
to  make  their  appeal.  Like  Howells,  he  studied  masters  and 
read  interminably,  pursuing  his  work  into  the  German  and  the 
French,  writing  constantly  and  rewriting  and  destroying.  And 
the  result,  as  with  Howells,  was  no  immaturities.  His  first  book, 
Flute  and  Violin,  published  when  he  was  forty-two,  is  by  many 
regarded  as  his  best  work.  To  his  earliest  readers  it  seemed  as 
if  a  new  young  writer  had  arrived  to  whom  art  was  a  spon 
taneous  thing  mastered  without  effort. 

A  study  of  the  available  fragments  of  Allen's  work  written 
earlier  than  the  stories  in  this  first  volume  reveals  much.  He 
began  as  a  critic.  In  Northern  journals  after  1883  one  may  find 
many  articles  signed  with  his  name:  sharp  criticisms  of  Henry 
James,  appreciations  of  Heine  and  Keats,  studies  of  the  art  of 
Balzac  and  his  circle,  letters  on  timely  subjects  which  show  the 
wideness  of  his  reading  and  the  gradual  shaping  of  his  art.  He 
evolved  his  method  deliberately  after  consideration  of  all  that 
had  been  done  in  England  and  America  and  France.  By  no 
other  writer  of  the  period  was  the  short  story  worked  out  with 
more  care  or  with  more  knowledge  of  requirements. 

Especially  significant  is  an  article  entitled  "  Local  Color "  in 
the  Critic  of  1886.  The  time  has  come,  he  contended,  when  the 
writer  of  fiction  must  broaden  the  old  conceptions  of  art.  Now 
the  novelist  must  be  "in  some  measure  a  scientist;  he  must  com 
prehend  the  natural  pictorial  environment  of  humanity  in  its 
manifold  effects  upon  humanity,  and  he  must  make  this  knowl 
edge  available  for  literary  presentation."  Other  requirements 
had  become  imperative: 

From  an  artistic  point  of  view,  the  aim  of  local  color  should  be 
to  make  the  picture  of  human  life  natural  and  beautiful,  or  dreary,  or 
somber,  or  terrific,  as  the  special  character  of  the  theme  may  demand; 
from  a  scientific  point  of  view,  the  aim  of  local  color  is  to  make  the 
picture  of  human  life  natural  and — intelligible,  by  portraying  those 
picturable  potencies  in  nature  that  made  it  what  it  was  and  must  go 
along  with  it  to  explain  what  it  is.  The  novelist  must  encompass  both 
aims. 

He  must  also  be  a  stylist.  "The  happiest  use  of  local  color," 
he  declares,  "will  test  to  the  uttermost  one's  taste  and  attain 
ments  as  a  language  colorist."  And  again,  "The  utmost  in  the 
use  of  local  color  should  result,  when  the  writer  chooses  the 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          367 

most  suitable  of  all  colors  that  are  characteristic ;  when  he  makes 
these  available  in  the  highest  degree  for  artistic  presentation; 
and  when  he  attains  and  uses  the  perfection  of  coloring  in 
style. " 

One  makes  another  discovery  as  one  works  among  these  earlier 
fragments :  Allen,  like  Howells,  was  a  poet.  His  first  contribu 
tions  to  the  larger  magazines — Harper's  and  the  Atlantic — were 
poems,  beautiful,  serious,  colorful. 

After  these  preliminaries  one  is  prepared  to  find  work  done 
with  excess  of  care,  with  precision  and  balance,  and,  moreover, 
to  find  color  in  its  literal  sense,  poetic  atmosphere  and  poetic 
phrasing,  scientific  truth  too,  nature  studied  as  Thoreau  studied 
it,  and  Burroughs.  The  six  stories  in  Flute  and  Violin  stand  by 
themselves  in  American  literature.  They  are  not  perfect  exam 
ples  of  the  short  story  judged  by  the  latest  canons.  They  make 
often  too  much  of  the  natural  background,  they  lack  in  swift 
ness,  and  they  do  not  culminate  with  dramatic  force.  They  are 
poetic,  at  times  almost  lyrical.  Open,  for  instance,  A  Kentucky 
Cardinal: 

March  has  gone  like  its  winds.  The  other  night  as  I  lay  awake  with 
that  yearning  which  often  beats  within,  there  fell  from  the  upper  air 
the  notes  of  the  wild  gander  as  he  wedged  his  way  onward  by  faith, 
not  by  sight,  towards  his  distant  bourn.  I  rose  and,  throwing  open 
the  shutters,  strained  eyes  toward  the  unseen  and  unseeing  explorer, 
startled,  as  a  half-asleep  soldier  might  be  startled  by  the  faint  bugle- 
call  of  his  commander,  blown  to  him  from  the  clouds.  What  far-off 
lands,  streaked  with  mortal  dawn,  does  he  believe  in*?  In  what  soft 
sylvan  waters  will  he  bury  his  tired  breast1?  Always  when  I  hear  his 
voice,  often  when  not,  I  too  desire  to  be  up  and  gone  out  of  these 
earthly  marshes  where  hunts  the  dark  Fowler — gone  to  some  vast, 
pure,  open  sea,  where,  one  by  one,  my  scattered  kind,  those  whom  I 
love  and  those  who  love  me,  will  arrive  in  safety,  there  to  be  together. 

One  thinks  of  Thoreau — one  thinks  of  him  often  as  one  reads 
Allen.  Everywhere  Nature,  and  Nature  with  the  metaphysical 
light  upon  it.  And  connected  with  Nature  always  the  tragedy 
of  human  life — beauty  of  landscape  expressed  in  perfect  beauty 
of  language,  but  under  it  and  behind  it  struggle  and  passion  and 
pain.  Nowhere  else  in  the  period  such  distinction  of  expres 
sion,  such  charm  of  literary  atmosphere,  combined  with  such 
deep  soundings  into  the  heart  of  human  life.  "The  White 
Cowl"  which  appeared  in  the  Century  of  1888  and  later  "Sister 


368  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Dolorosa"  may  be  compared  with  no  other  American  work  later 
than  " Ethan  Brand." 

In  his  first  period  Allen  was  distinctively  a  writer  of  short 
stories  and  sketches.  His  canvas  was  small,  his  plots  single 
and  uncomplicated,  his  backgrounds  over-elaborate,  impeding 
the  movement  of  the  plot  and  overshadowing  the  characters. 
His  art  began  with  landscape — his  second  book,  much  of  the 
matter  of  which  was  written  before  the  contents  of  the  first,  was 
wholly  landscape,  landscape  idealized  and  made  lyric.  Then 
came  John  Gray,  a  preliminary  sketch,  and  A  Kentucky  Car 
dinal  and  its  sequel  Aftermath,  long  and  short  stories,  parables, 
humanity  beginning  to  emerge  from  the  vast  cosmic  nature  spec 
tacle  and  to  dominate.  Over  everything  beauty,  yet  through  it 
all  a  strain  of  sadness,  the  sadness  of  youth  repressed,  of  tragedy 
too  soon. 

The  second  period  began  in  1896  with  the  publication  of  Sum 
mer  in  Arcady.  The  novelist  had  moved  permanently  to  New 
York  City.  He  had  gained  a  broader  outlook;  he  had  felt  the 
new  forces  that  were  moving  Thomas  Hardy  and  the  French 
novelists.  His  early  work  seemed  to  him  now  narrow  and  weak, 
mere  exercises  of  a  prentice  hand.  He  would  work  with  the 
novel  now  rather  than  with  the  short  story;  he  would  deal  with 
broad  canvas,  with  the  great  fundamental  problems  that  compli 
cate  human  life.  His  essay  in  the  Atlantic  of  October,  1897, 
explains  the  new  period  in  his  work.  Literature  even  into  the 
mid-nineties  had  been  feminine  rather  than  masculine,  he 
averred.  The  American  novelists  had  aimed  too  much  at  re 
finement. 

They  sought  the  coverts  where  some  of  the  more  delicate  elements  of 
our  national  life  escaped  the  lidless  eye  of  publicity,  and  paid  their 
delicate  tributes  to  these;  on  the  clumsy  canvases  of  our  tumultuous 
democracy  they  watched  to  see  where  some  solitary  being  or  group  of 
beings  described  lines  of  living  grace,  and  with  grace  they  detached 
these  and  transferred  them  to  the  enduring  canvases  of  letters;  they 
found  themselves  impelled  to  look  for  the  minute  things  of  our  human 
ity,  and  having  gathered  these,  to  polish  them,  carve  them,  compose 
them  into  minute  structures  with  minutest  elaboration  .  .  .  polishing 
and  adornment  of  the  little  things  of  life — little  ideas,  little  emotions, 
little  states  of  mind  and  shades  of  feeling,  climaxes  and  denouements, 
little  comedies  and  tragedies  played  quite  through  or  not  quite  played 
through  by  little  men  and  women  on  the  little  stage  of  little  play 
houses. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          369 

So  much  for  the  past,  for  the  feminine  age  to  which  his  own 
earlier  work  had  belonged.  A  new  age  had  arisen;  a  masculine 
age,  less  delicate,  less  refined,  less  heedful  of  little  things,  a 
strenuous  age,  more  passionate  and  virile,  less  shrinking  and 
squeamish. 

It  is  striking  out  boldly  for  larger  things — larger  areas  of  adven 
ture,  larger  spaces  of  history,  with  freer  movements  through  both:  it 
would  have  the  wings  of  a  bird  in  the  air,  and  not  the  wings  of  a  bird 
on  a  woman's  hat.  It  reveals  a  disposition  to  place  its  scenery,  its 
companies  of  players,  and  the  logic  of  its  dramas,  not  in  rare,  pale, 
half-lighted,  dimly  beheld  backgrounds,  but  nearer  to  the  footlights  of 
the  obvious.  And  if,  finally,  it  has  any  one  characteristic  more  dis 
cernible  than  another,  it  is  the  movement  away  from  the  summits  of 
life  downward  towards  the  bases  of  life;  from  the  heights  of  civiliza 
tion  to  the  primitive  springs  of  action;  from  the  thin-aired  regions  of 
consciousness  which  are  ruled  over  by  Tact  to  the  underworld  of 
consciousness  where  are  situated  the  mighty  workshops,  and  where  toils 
on  forever  the  cyclopean  youth,  Instinct. 

It  was  more  than  the  analysis  of  a  far-seeing  critic:  it  was 
the  call  of  a  novelist  to  himself  to  abandon  the  small  ideals  and 
narrow  field  of  his  early  art,  and  strike  out  into  the  main  cur 
rents  of  the  age. 

Let  us  try  for  a  while  the  literary  virtues  and  the  literary  materials 
of  less  self -consciousness,  of  larger  self-abandonment,  and  thus  impart 
to  our  fiction  the  free,  the  uncaring,  the  tremendous  fling  and  swing 
that  are  the  very  genius  of  our  time  and  spirit. 

Following  this  declaration  came  the  three  major  novels,  The 
Choir  Invisible,  which  was  his  old  short  story  John  Gray  en 
larged  and  given  ''fling  and  swing,"  The  Reign  of  Law,  and 
The  Mettle  of  the  Pasture,  novels  of  the  type  which  he  had  de 
nominated  masculine,  American,  yet  to  be  grouped  with  noth 
ing  else  in  American  literature,  their  only  analogues  being  found 
in  England  or  France. 

In  all  his  work  he  had  been,  as  he  had  promised  in  his  essay 
on  "Local  Color,"  essentially  scientific  in  spirit,  but  now  he  be 
came  direct,  fearless,  fundamental.  Nature  he  made  central 
now.  The  older  art  had  made  of  it  a  background,  a  thing  apart 
from  humanity,  sometimes  sympathetic,  sometimes  indifferent, 
but  Allen,  like  Hardy  and  his  school,  made  of  it  now  a  ruling 
force,  a  dominating  personality  in  the  tragedy.  The  first  title 


370  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

of  Slimmer  in  Arcady  as  it  ran  serially  in  the  Cosmopolitan  was 
Huttt  r/li's:  a  Tale  of  Nature.  Its  theme  was  the  compelling 
laws  within  human  life:  instincts,  inheritances,  physical  forces 
that  bind  beyond  power  to  escape.  Man  is  not  to  be  treated  as 
apart  from  Nature  but  as  inseparably  a  part  of  Nature,  hurled 
on  by  forces  that  he  does  not  understand,  ruled  all  unknowingly 
by  heredity,  fighting  senseless  battles  that,  could  he  but  know 
all,  would  reduce  life  to  a  succession  of  ironies:  "If  Daphne 
had  but  known,  hidden  away  on  one  of  those  yellow  sheets  [on 
which  her  own  runaway  marriage  had  just  been  recorded,  the 
last  of  a  long  series  of  such  marriages]  were  the  names  of  her 
own  father  and  mother." 

In  these  later  novels  one  finds  now  fully  developed  an  element 
that  had  been  latent  in  all  of  his  early  work — a  mystic  symbolism 
that  in  many  ways  is  peculiar  to  Allen.  Summer  in  Arcady  is 
built  up  around  a  parallelism  that  extends  into  every  part  of 
the  story: 

Can  you  consider  a  field  of  butterflies  and  not  think  of  the  blindly 
wandering,  blindly  loving,  quickly  passing  human  race?  Can  you 
observe  two  young  people  at  play  on  the  meadows  of  Life  and  Love 
without  seeing  in  them  a  pair  of  these  brief  moths  of  the  sun  ? 

And  The  Reign  of  Law  is  a  parable  from  beginning  to  end, 
a  linking  of  man  to  Nature,  a  parallelism  between  human  life 
and  the  life  of  the  hemp  of  the  Kentucky  fields: 

Ah!  type,  too,  of  our  life,  which  also  is  earth-sown,  earth-rooted; 
which  must  struggle  upward,  be  cut  down,  rooted  and  broken,  ere  the 
separation  take  place  between  our  dross  and  our  worth — poor  perish 
able  shard  and  immortal  fiber.  Oh,  the  mystery,  the  mystery  of  tli.it 
growth  from  the  casting  of  the  soul  as  a  seed  into  the  dark  earth, 
until  the  time  when,  led  through  all  natural  changes  and  cleansed  of 
weakness,  it  is  borne  from  the  field  of  its  nativity  for  the  long  service. 

All  of  his  work  is  essentially  timeless  and  placeless.  He 
had  had  from  the  first  little  in  common  with  the  other  short 
story  writers  of  locality.  Of  dialect  he  has  almost  none;  of 
the  negro  who  so  dominates  Southern  literature  he  shows  only 
a  glimpse  in  one  or  two  of  his  earlier  sketches.  His  background, 
to  be  sure,  is  always  Kentucky  and  this  background  he  describes 
with  minuteness,  but  there  is  no  attempt  to  portray  personali 
ties  or  types  peculiar  to  the  State.  He  is  working  rather  in  the 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          371 

realm  of  human  life.  Always  is  he  tremendously  serious.  A 
lambent  humor  may  play  here  and  there  over  the  tales,  but 
everywhere  is  there  the  feeling  of  coming  tragedy.  Too  much 
concerned  he  is,  perhaps,  with  the  conception  of  sex  as  the  cen 
tral  problem  of  life — Summer  in  Arcady  and  The  Mettle  of  the 
Pasture  were  greeted  with  storms  of  disapproval — but  one  feels 
that  he  is  sincere,  that  he  stands  always  on  scientific  grounds, 
and  that  he  is  telling  what  he  conceives  to  be  the  undiminished 
truth  about  modern  life. 

And  his  solution,  so  far  as  he  offers  a  solution,  is  free  from 
bitterness  or  pessimism.  He  is  superior  to  Hardy  inasmuch  as 
he  is  able  to  rise  above  the  pagan  standpoint  and  see  the  end 
of  the  suffering  and  the  irony  crowned  with  ultimate  good. 
John  Gray  in  The  Choir  Invisible  summed  up  the  philosophy 
of  the  author  in  sentences  like  these:  "To  lose  faith  in  men, 
not  in  humanity;  to  see  justice  go  down  and  not  to  believe  in 
the  triumph  of  injustice ;  for  every  wrong  that  you  weakly  deal 
another  or  another  deals  you  to  love  more  and  more  the  fairness 
and  beauty  of  what  is  right,  and  so  to  turn  the  ever-increasing 
love  from  the  imperfection  that  is  in  us  all  to  the  Perfection  that 
is  above  us  all — the  perfection  that  is  God:  this  is  one  of  the 
ideals  of  actual  duty  that  you  once  said  were  to  be  as  candles 
in  my  hand.  Many  a  time  this  candle  has  gone  out;  but  as 
quickly  as  I  could  snatch  any  torch — with  your  sacred  name  on 
my  lips — it  has  been  relighted." 

The  volume  of  his  writings  is  small.  He  has  worked  always 
slowly,  revising,  rewriting,  never  satisfied.  His  earlier  short 
stories  are  perhaps  his  most  perfect  work;  his  longer  short 
stories,  like  A  Kentucky  Cardinal,  his  most  charming ;  and  his 
later  novels  like  The  Mettle  of  the  Pasture,  his  most  enduring, 
inasmuch  as  they  contain  the  chief  substance  of  what  he  had  to 
say  to  his  generation.  His  weakness  has  been  a  fondness  for 
elaboration :  in  The  Reign  of  Law  a  chapter  is  given  to  the  life 
history  of  the  hemp  plant  and  to  a  parallelism  between  it  and 
human  life.  The  movement  of  his  stories  is  constantly  impeded 
by  what  is  really  extraneous  material,  endless  descriptions  of 
landscape,  beautiful  in  itself  but  needless,  and  unnecessary 
episodes :  a  cougar  ' '  gaunt  with  famine  and  come  for  its  kill ' ' 
is  creeping  up  to  John  Gray,  who  is  weaponless,  but  before  the 
final  spring  four  pages  about  the  habits  of  the  animal — a  chap- 


372  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

ter  altogether  for  the  adventure,  and  after  it  is  all  told  it  is 
"lumber"  so  far  as  the  needs  of  the  novel  are  concerned. 

But  there  is  a  more  fundamental  weakness:  his  work  on  the 
whole  is  the  product  of  a  follower  rather  than  a  leader.  He 
learned  his  art  deliberately  impelled  not  by  a  voice  within  which 
demanded  expression  but  by  a  love  for  beautiful  things  and  a 
dogged  determination  to  win  in  the  field  that  he  had  chosen  for 
his  life  work.  By  interminable  toil  and  patience,  and  by  alert 
ness  to  seize  upon  every  new  development  in  his  art,  he  made 
himself  at  last  a  craftsman  of  marvelous  skill,  even  of  brilliancy. 
He  was  not  a  voice  in  the  period ;  rather  was  he  an  artisan  with 
a  sure  hand,  a  craftsman  with  exquisite  skill. 

IV 

The  triumph  of  the  short  story  came  in  the  early  nineties. 
In  the  September,  1891,  issue  of  Harper's  Monthbj  .Mr.  Howells, 
reviewing  Garland's  Main-Traveled  Roads,  commented  on  the 
fact  that  collections  of  stories  from  the  magazines  were  com 
peting  on  even  terms  with  the  novels: 

We  do  not  know  how  it  has  happened;  we  should  not  at  all  under 
take  to  say;  but  it  is  probably  attributable  to  a  number  of  causes.  It 
may  be  the  prodigious  popularity  of  Mr.  Kipling  which  has  broken 
down  all  prejudices  against  the  form  of  his  success.  The  vogue  that 
Maupassant's  tales  in  the  original  or  in  versions  have  enjoyed  may 
have  had  something  to  do  with  it.  Possibly  the  critical  recognition  of 
the  American  supremacy  in  this  sort  has  helped.  But  however  it  has 
come  about,  it  is  certain  that  the  result  has  come,  and  the  publishers 
are  fearlessly  venturing  volumes  of  short  stories  on  every  hand;  and 
not  only  short  stories  by  authors  of  established  repute,  but  by  new 
writers  who  would  certainly  not  have  found  this  way  to  the  public 
some  time  ago. 

During  this  decade  the  short  story  reached  its  highest  level. 
In  February,  1892,  the  Atlantic  Monthly  in  a  review  of  current 
collections  of  short  stories  by  Thomas  Nelson  Page,  Joel  Chand 
ler  Harris,  James  Lane  Allen,  Octave  Thanet,  Hamlin  Garland, 
Richard  Harding  Davis,  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps,  Rose  Terry 
Cooke,  George  A.  Hibbard,  William  Douglas  O'Connor,  Clinton 
Eton,  Thomas  A.  Janvier,  H.  C.  Bunner,  Brander  Matthews,  and 
Frank  R.  Stockton,  remarked  of  the  form  that  "in  America  it 
is  the  most  vital  as  well  as  the  most  distinctive  part  of  litera 
ture.  In  fact,  it  flourishes  so  amply  that  this  very  prosperity 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          373 

nullifies  most  of  the  apologies  for  the  American  novel."  But 
even  within  the  limits  of  the  decade  of  its  fullest  success  came 
the  decline.  The  enormous  vogue  of  the  form  resulted  in  the  : 
journalization  of  it.  0.  Henry  with  his  methods  helped  greatly 
to  devitalize  and  cheapen  it.  With  him  the  short  story  became 
fictional  vaudeville.  Everywhere  a  straining  for  effect,  a 
search  for  the  piquant  and  the  startling.  He  is  theatric,  stagy, 
smart,  ultra  modern.  Instead  of  attempts  at  truth  a  succession 
of  smart  hits:  ''The  wind  out  of  the  mountains  was  singing 
like  a  jew's-harp  in  a  pile  of  old  tomato-cans  by  the  railroad 
track";  "A  bullet-headed  man  Smith  was,  with  an  oblique,  dead 
eye  and  the  mustache  of  a  cocktail  mixer,"  etc.  He  is  flippant, 
insincere,  with  an  eye  to  the  last  sentence  which  must  startle 
the  reader  until  he  gasps.  After  O.  Henry  the  swift  decline  of 
the  short  story,  the  inclusion  of  it  in  correspondence  courses,  and 
the  reign  of  machine-made  art. 


But  during  the  decade  of  the  high  tide  came  some  of  the 
strongest  work  in  American  literature.  It  was  the  period  of  the 
earlier  and  better  work  of  Hamlin  Garland  and  Alice  French,  of 
Richard  Harding  Davis  and  Ambrose  Bierce,  of  Mrs.  Deland  and 
F.  H.  Smith,  with  Garland,  perhaps,  the  most  distinctive  worker. 
Garland  began  as  an  iconoclast,  a  leader  of  the  later  phase  of 
realism — depressed  realism  after  the  Russian  and  the  French 
types.  His  little  book  of  essays,  Crumbling  Idols,  breezy  and 
irreverent,  with  its  cry  for  a  new  Americanism  in  our  literature, 
new  truth,  new  realism,  was  the  voice  of  the  new  generation 
after  Harte  and  Howells,  the  school  inspired  by  Ibsen,  Hardy, 
Tolstoy,  Maupassant.  The  Middle  West  was  his  background  and 
he  knew  it  with  completeness.  He  had  been  born  in  a  Wiscon 
sin  "coule"  on  a  ragged,  half-broken  farm,  and  before  he 
was  eleven  he  had  migrated  with  his  parents  westward,  three 
different  times.  His  boyhood  had  followed  the  middle  western 
border.  The  father  was  of  Maine  Yankee  stock,  full  of  the  rest 
lessness  and  eagerness  of  his  generation.  In  his  son's  record  he 
stands  out  in  almost  epic  proportions. 

Hour  after  hour  we  pushed  westward,  the  heads  of  our  tired  horses 
hanging  ever  lower,  and  on  my  mother's  face  the  shadow  deepened,  but 


374  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

my  father's  voice  calling  to  his  team  lost  nothing  of  its  edge.  He  was 
in  his  element.  He  loved  this  shelterless  sweep  of  sod.  This  west- 
wanl  march  delighted  him.  I  think  he  would  have  gladly  kept  on  until 
he  reached  the  Rocky  Mountains.1 

He  had  stopped  this  time  in  Iowa  and  had  begun  once  again 
the  tremendous  task  of  making  a  farm  out  of  the  virgin  prairie. 
The  boy  took  his  full  share  of  work.  Speaking  of  himself  in  the 
third  person,  he  says:  "In  the  autumn  that  followed  his  elev 
enth  birthday  he  plowed  for  seventy  days,  overturning  nearly 
one  hundred  and  fifty  acres  of  stubble."  At  fifteen  he  was 
head  farmer  and  took  a  man's  place  on  the  reaper,  at  the  thresh 
ing,  and  in  all  of  the  farm  work.  Education  came  to  him  as  he 
could  get  it.  He  attended  the  winter  sessions  of  the  district 
school  and  he  read  all  the  books  that  the  neighborhood  afforded. 
By  rarest  good  fortune  his  father  subscribed  for  the  new  Hearth 
and  Home  in  which  the  serial  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster  was 
running,  and  in  the  boy's  own  words  in  later  years  the  story 
was  a  ' '  milestone  in  his  literary  progress  as  it  was  in  the  develop 
ment  of  distinctive  Western  fiction." 

His  later  struggles  toward  culture,  his  graduation  in  1881 
from  Cedar  Valley  Seminary,  Osage,  Iowa,  his  school  teaching 
in  Illinois  and  Dakota,  his  experience  as  a  settler  during  the 
Dakota  land  "boom"  of  1883,  his  Howells-like  journey  to  Bos 
ton  the  following  year,  and  his  years  of  life  there  as  teacher  and 
eager  student,  must  be  passed  over  swiftly.  He  haunted  the 
Boston  public  library  and  read  enormously,  he  became  impressed 
with  the  theories  of  the  new  French  school  of  "Veritists,"  and 
he  soon  began  to  write,  first  photographic  sketches  of  Middle- 
Western  life — corn  and  wheat  raising,  rural  customs,  and  the 
like — then  after  a  long  period  he  returned  West  for  his  first  va 
cation.  At  Chicago  he  visited  Joseph  Kirkland  (1830-1894), 
author  of  Zury:  the  Meanest  Man  in  Spring  County  (1887), 
a  book  of  crude  yet  strong  pictures  of  Western  life,  and  the  call 
was  another  milestone  in  his  literary  life. 

The  result  of  that  vacation  was  three  books  of  short  stories, 
their  author's  most  distinctive  work,  Main-Traveled  Roads, 
Prairie  Folks,  and  Other  Main-Traveled  Roads.  His  own  ac 
count  of  the  matter  is  worthy  of  quotation: 

i  Collier's,  May  9,  1914. 


THE  TEIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          375 

The  entire  series  was  the  result  of  a  summer-vacation  visit  to  my 
old  home  in  Iowa,  to  my  father's  farm  in  Dakota,  and,  last  of  all,  to 
my  birthplace  in  Wisconsin.  This  happened  in  1887.  I  was  living 
at  the  time  in  Boston,  and  had  not  seen  the  West  for  several  years, 
and  my  return  to  the  scenes  of  my  boyhood  started  me  upon  a  series 
of  stories  delineative  of  farm  and  village  life  as  I  knew  it  and  had 
lived  it.  I  wrote  busily  during  the  two  years  that  followed,  and  in 
this  revised  definitive  edition  of  Main-Traveled  Roads  and  its  com 
panion  volume,  Other  Main-Traveled  Roads  (compiled  from  other  vol 
umes  which  now  go  out  of  print),  the  reader  will  find  all  of  the  short 
stories  which  came  from  my  pen  between  1887  and  1889. 

It  remains  to  say  that,  though  conditions  have  changed  somewhat 
since  that  time,  yet  for  the  hired  man  and  the  renter  farm  life  in  the 
West  is  still  a  stern  round  of  drudgery.  My  pages  present  it — not  as 
the  summer  boarder  or  the  young  lady  novelist  sees  it — but  as  the 
working  farmer  endures  it. 

After  the  years  at  Boston  the  life  of  his  native  region  had 
taken  on  for  him  a  totally  new  aspect.  He  saw  it  now  as  How 
ard  saw  it  in  "Up  the  Coule,'7  the  grinding  toil  of  it,  the  brutal 
ity  and  hopelessness  and  horror  of  it,  and  it  filled  him  with  fierce 
anger.  He  wrote  with  full  heart  and  with  an  earnestness  that 
was  terrible,  and  he  had  the  courage  of  his  convictions.  Will 
Hannan  takes  Agnes  from  the  hell  into  which  she  has  married 
and  bears  her  into  his  own  new  home  of  love  and  helpfulness  and 
there  is  no  apology,  and  again  the  same  theme  in  later  tales. 
There  is  the  grimness  and  harshness  and  unsparing  fidelity  to 
fact,  however  unpleasant,  that  one  finds  in  the  Russian  realists, 
but  there  is  another  element  added  to  it:  the  fervor  and  faith 
of  the  reformer.  Such  a  story  as  ' '  Under  the  Lion 's  Paw, ' '  for 
instance,  does  not  leave  one,  like  Ibsen  and  Hardy,  in  despair 
and  darkness;  it  arouses  rather  to  anger  and  the  desire  to  take 
action  harsh  and  immediate.  There  is  no  dodging  of  facts.  All 
the  dirt  and  coarseness  of  farm  life  come  into  the  picture  and 
often  dominate  it.  The  author  is  not  writing  poetry ;  despite  his 
Prairie  Songs  he  is  no  poet.  Howard  is  visiting  home  after  a 
long  absence: 

It  was  humble  enough — a  small  white  story-and-a-half  structure, 
with  a  wing  set  in  the  midst  of  a  few  locust  trees ;  a  small  drab-colored 
barn  with  a  sagging  ridge-pole;  a  barnyard  full  of  mud,  in  which  a 
few  cows  were  standing,  fighting  the  flies  and  waiting  to  be  milked. 
An  old  man  was  pumping  water  at  the  well;  the  pigs  were  squealing 
from  a  pen  near  by;  a  child  was  crying.  .  .  . 

As  he  waited,  he  could  hear  a  woman's  fretful  voice,  and  the  impa- 


376  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

tient  jerk  and  jar  of  kitchen  things,  indicative  of  ill-temper  or  worry. 
The  longer  he  stood  absorbing  this  farm-scene,  with  all  its  sordidness, 
dullness,  triviality,  and  its  endless  drudgeries,  the  lower  his  heart  sank. 
All  the  joy  of  the  home-coming  was  gone,  when  the  figure  arose  from 
the  cow  and  approached  the  gate,  and  put  the  pail  of  milk  down  on 
the  platform  by  the  pump. 

"Good-evening,"  said  Howard,  out  of  the  dusk. 

Grant  stared  a  moment.     "Good-evening." 

Howard  knew  the  voice,  though  it  was  older  and  deeper  and  more 
sullen.  "Don't  you  know  me,  Grant?  I  am  Howard." 

The  man  approached  him,  gazing  intently  at  his  face.  "You  are?" 
after  a  pause.  "Well,  I  'm  glad  to  see  you,  but  I  can't  shake  hands. 
That  damned  cow  has  laid  down  in  the  mud." 

But  the  most  pitiful  pictures  are  those  of  the  women.  Lucretia 
Burns  is  a  type: 

She  had  no  shawl  or  hat  and  no  shoes,  for  it  was  still  muddy  in  tho 
little  yard,  where  the  cattle  stood  patiently  fighting  the  flies  and  mosqui 
toes  swarming  into  their  skins,  already  wet  with  blood.  The  evening 
was  oppressive  with  its  heat,  and  a  ring  of  just-seen  thunder-heads 
gave  premonitions  of  an  approaching  storm. 

She  arose  from  the  cow's  side  at  last,  and,  taking  her  pails  of  foam 
ing  milk,  staggered  toward  the  gate.  The  two  pails  hung  from  her 
lean  arms,  her  bare  feet  slipped  on  the  filthy  ground,  her  greasy  and 
faded  calico  dress  showed  her  tired  and  swollen  ankles,  and  the  mosqui 
toes  swarmed  mercilessly  on  her  neck  and  bedded  themselves  in  her 
colorless  hair. 

The  children  were  quarreling  at  the  well,  and  the  sound  of  blows 
could  be  heard.  Calves  were  querulously  calling  for  their  milk,  and 
little  turkeys,  lost  in  a  tangle  of  grass,  were  piping  plaintively. 

It  was  a  pitifully  worn,  almost  tragic  face — long,  thin,  sallow,  hol 
low-eyed.  The  mouth  had  long  since  lost  the  power  to  shape  itself 
into  a  kiss,  and  had  a  droop  at  the  corners  which  seemed  to  announce 
a  breaking-down  at  any  moment  into  a  despairing  wail.  The  collarless 
neck  and  sharp  shoulders  showed  painfully. 

It  is  the  tragic  world  of  Mary  E.  Wilkins — her  obstinate,  ele 
mental,  undemonstrative  rustics  moved  into  a  new  setting.  As 
in  her  work,  simplicity,  crude  force,  the  power  of  one  who  for 
a  moment  has  forgotten  art  and  gives  the  feeling  of  actual  life, 
verisimilitude  that  convinces  and  compels.  The  little  group  of 
stories  is  work  sent  hot  from  a  man's  heart,  and  they  are  alive 
as  are  few  other  stories  of  the  period,  and  they  will  live.  They 
are  part  of  the  deeper  history  of  a  section  and  an  era. 

This  element  of  purpose  is  found  in  all  of  Garland's  work. 
Nowhere  is  he  a  mere  teller  of  tales.  The  Scotch  and  Yankee 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          377 

elements  within  him  made  of  him  a  preacher,  a  man  with  a 
message.  The  narrow  field  of  his  first  success  could  not  long 
be  worked,  and,  like  the  true  son  of  a  pioneer,  he  began  to  follow 
his  old  neighbors  in  their  further  migrations  westward.  His 
later  work  took  the  form  of  novels,  many  of  them  dealing  with 
the  extreme  West  and  all  of  them  saturated  with  purpose.  His 
Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop,  for  instance,  attempted  for 
the  Indian  what  Ramona  tried  to  do.  It  is  a  powerful  study 
of  the  wrongs  done  a  race,  and,  moreover,  it  is  a  novel.  Still 
later  the  native  mysticism  of  his  race  showed  itself  in  such  nov 
els  as  The  Tyranny  of  the  Dark,  The  Shadow  World,  Victor 
Ollnee's  Discipline — spiritualistic  propaganda. 

With  the  novel  he  has  not  fully  succeeded.  He  lacks  power 
of  construction  and  ability  for  extended  effort.  The  short  story 
"A  Branch  Road"  in  Main-Traveled  Roads  has  a  gripping  power, 
but  the  same  theme  treated  at  novel  length  in  Moccasin  Ranch 
becomes  too  much  an  exploiting  of  background.  There  is  a  sense 
of  dilution,  a  loss  of  effect.  The  author 's  first  fine  edge  of  anger, 
of  conviction,  of  complete  possession  by  his  material,  is  gone,  and 
we  have  the  feeling  that  he  has  become  a  professional  man  of 
letters,  an  exploiter  of  what  he  considers  to  be  salable  material. 
His  best  long  novel  is  Rose  of  Dutcher's  Coolly.  Money  Magic 
has  a  certain  sense  of  power  connected  with  it,  but  it  lacks  the 
final  touch  of  actual  life.  Unlike  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham, 
with  which  it  may  be  compared,  it  leaves  us  unsatisfied.  The 
quivering  sense  of  reality  that  one  finds  in  Main-Traveled  Roads 
is  not  there.  It  is  a  performance,  a  brilliant  picture  made  de 
liberately  and  coldly  by  a  man  in  his  study,  whereas  a  story 
like  " Among  the  Corn  Rows"  reads  as  if  it  had  taken  possession 
of  its  author,  and  had  been  written  with  a  burst  of  creative 
enthusiasm.  One  late  fragment  of  Garland's  must  not  be  over 
looked,  his  A  Son  of  the  Middle  Border,  a  part  of  which  has 
appeared  in  serial  form.  It  is  an  autobiography,  and  it  is  more : 
it  is  a  document  in  the  history  of  the  Middle  West.  It  has  a 
value  above  all  his  novels,  above  all  else  that  he  has  written, 
saving  always  those  tense  short  stories  of  his  first  inspiration. 

VI 

The  Western  stories  of  Alice  French  antedated  by  several  years 
^arland  's  first  work  and  perhaps  had  an  influence  upon  it.  Her 


378  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

strong  story  "The  Bishop's  Vagabond"  appeared  in  the  Atlantic 
as  early  as  1884  and  her  collection  Knitters  in  the  Sun  by  Octave 
Thanet  came  out  in  1887.  Her  work,  however,  has  not  the  orig 
inality  and  the  sharpness  of  outline  of  Garland's  and  it  has 
failed  to  hold  the  high  place  that  was  at  first  assigned  to  it. 
She  is  to  be  classed  with  Miss  Woolson  rather  than  with  Mrs. 
Wilkins  Freeman,  with  Miss  Murfree  rather  than  with  Harris. 
She  was  not  a  native  of  the  regions  she  chose  as  her  literary  field, 
but  she  entered  them  with  curiosity  and  studied  their  peculiari 
ties  carefully  with  open  note-book  for  Northern  readers. 

Her  father  and  her  brothers  were  extensive  manufacturers, 
and  contact  with  their  work  gave  her  a  knowledge  of  labor  con 
ditions  and  of  economic  problems  that  enabled  her  in  the  early 
eighties  to  contribute  to  the  Atlantic  and  other  magazines  able 
papers,  such  as  "The  Indoor  Pauper"  and  "Contented  Masses," 
papers  widely  commented  upon  for  their  brilliancy  and  breadth 
of  view.  But  the  success  won  everywhere  by  the  feminine  short 
story  writers  tempted  her  from  these  economic  studies,  and  for 
a  time  she  wrote  local  color  tales  with  variety  of  background — 
Canada,  Florida,  Iowa.  Then,  with  ample  means  at  her  disposal, 
she  built  at  Clover  Bend,  Arkansas,  a  summer  home  on  the  banks 
of  the  Black  River,  and,  like  Miss  Murfree,  became  interested  in 
the  crude  social  conditions  about  her,  so  different  from  those  of 
her  native  New  England  or  her  adopted  Iowa  city  of  Daven 
port.  Stories  like  "Whitsun  Harp,  Regulator"  and  "Ma' 
Bowlin'  "  followed,  then  the  fine  studies  entitled  "Plantation 
Life  in  Arkansas"  and  "Town  Life  in  Arkansas." 

These  earlier  stories  are  often  dramatic,  even  melodramatic, 
and  they  abound  in  sentiment.  Sometimes  a  character  stands 
out  with  sharpness,  but  more  often  the  tale  impresses  one  as  a 
performance  rather  than  a  bit  of  actual  life.  The  intense  feel 
ing  that  Garland,  who  wrote  as  if  his  material  came  from  out 
his  own  bitter  heart,  throws  into  his  stories  she  does •  not  have. 
She  stands  as  an  outsider  and  looks  on  with  interest  and  takes 
notes,  often  graphic  notes,  then  displays  her  material  as  an  ex 
hibitor  sets  forth  his  curious  collection. 

More  and  more  the  sociological  specialist  and  the  reformer 
took  control  of  her  pen.  Even  her  short  stories  are  not  free 
from  special  pleading:  "Convict  Number  49,"  for  instance,  is 
not  so  much  a  story  as  a  tract  for  the  times.  In  her  novels  the 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          379 

problem  dominates.  The  Man  of  the  Hour  and  The  Lion's 
Share  treat  phases  of  the  labor  problem,  and  By  Inheritance  is 
a  study  of  the  negro  question  with  an  attempted  solution.  The 
story,  despite  dramatic  intensity  at  times  and  lavish  sentiment, 
fails  often  to  interest  the  reader  unless  he  be  a  sociologist  or 
a  reformer.  Already  she  holds  her  place  by  reason  of  a  few 
of  her  earlier  short  stories,  and  it  would  seem  that  even  these 
are  now  losing  the  place  that  once  undoubtedly  was  theirs. 

More  convincing,  though  perhaps  they  have  had  smaller  in 
fluence  upon  their  time,  have  been  the  Vermont  stories  of  Row 
land  E.  Robinson,  which  are  genuine  at  every  point  and  full  of 
subtle  humor,  and  the  Adirondack  stories  of  Philander  Deming, 
which  began  to  appear  in  the  Atlantic  in  the  mid-seventies. 
Both  men  have  written  out  of  their  own  lives  with  full  hearts, 
and  both  have  added  to  their  material  a  touch  of  originality 
that  has  made  it  distinctive. 

VII 

In  tracing  the  development  of  the  short  story  to  the  end  of 
the  century  one  must  pause  at  the  exquisite  work  of  H.  C.  Bun- 
ner,  who  undoubtedly  did  much  toward  bringing  the  form  to 
mechanical  perfection.  His  volume  entitled  Made  in  France: 
French  Tales  with  a  U.  S.  Twist,  suggests  one  secret  of  his  art. 
He  had  a  conciseness,  a  brilliancy  of  effect,  an  epigrammatic 
touch,  that  suggest  the  best  qualities  of  French  style.  In  his 
volumes  Short  Sixes  and  More  Short  Sixes  he  is  at  his  best — 
humorous,  artistic,  effective,  and  in  addition  he  touches  at  times 
the  deeper  strata  of  human  life  and  becomes  an  interpreter  and 
a  leader. 

French  in  effect  also  is  Ambrose  Bierce,  who  in  his  earlier 
work  displayed  a  power  to  move  his  readers  that  is  little  found 
outside  of  Poe.  Reserve  he  has,  a  directness  that  at  times  is 
disconcerting,  originality  of  a  peculiar  type,  and  a  command 
of  many  of  the  subtlest  elements  of  the  story-telling  art,  but 
lacking  sincerity,  he  fails  of  permanent  appeal.  He  writes  for 
effect,  for  startling  climax,  for  an  insidious  attack  upon  his 
reader's  nerves,  and  often,  as  in  his  collection  entitled  In  the 
Midst  of  Life,  he  works  his  will.  But  he  is  not  true,  he  works 
not  in  human  life  as  it  is  actually  lived,  but  in  a  Poe-like  life  that 
exists  only  in  his  own  imaginings.  In  his  later  years  journal- 


380  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

ism  took  the  line  <-dge  from  his  art  and  adverse  criticism  of  his 
work  turned  him  into  something  like  a  literary  anarchist  who 
rritiei/ed  with  bitterness  all  things  established.  A  few  of  his 
novels  may  be  studied  with  profit  as  models  of  their  kind,  but 
the  greater  part  of  his  writings  despite  their  brilliancy  can  not 
hope  for  permanence. 

One  may  close  the  survey  with  Richard  Harding  Davis,  who 
may  be  taken  as  the  typical  figure  of  the  last  years  of  the  cen 
tury.  Davis  was  a  journalist,  peculiarly  and  essentially  a  jour 
nalist.  He  began  his  career  in  a  newspaper  office  and  all  that 
he  did  was  colored  by  the  newspaper  atmosphere.  Literature 
to  him  was  a  thing  to  be  dashed  off  with  facility,  to  be  read  with 
t  \citement,  and  to  be  thrown  aside.  The  art  of  making  it  he 
learned  as  one  learns  any  other  profession,  by  careful  study  and 
painstaking  thoroughness,  and  having  mastered  it  he  became  a 
literary  practitioner,  expert  in  all  branches. 

"Gallagher"  was  his  first  story,  and  it  was  a  brilliant  pro 
duction,  undoubtedly  his  best.  Then  followed  the  Van  Bibber 
stories,  facile  studies  of  the  idle  rich  area  of  New  York  life  of 
which  the  author  was  a  mere  spectator,  remarkable  only  for  the 
influence  they  exerted  on  younger  writers.  Of  the  rest  of  his 
voluminous  output  little  need  be  said.  It  is  ephemeral,  it  was 
made  to  supply  the  demand  of  the  time  for  amusement.  With 
0.  Henry,  Edward  W.  Townsend  of  the  "Chimmie  Fadden" 
stories,  and  others,  its  author  debauched  the  short  story  and 
made  it  the  mere  thing  of  a  day,  a  bit  of  journalism  to  be 
thrown  aside  with  the  paper  that  contained  it.  On  the  mechani 
cal  side  one  may  find  but  little  fault.  As  a  performance  it  is 
often  brilliant,  full  of  dash  and  spirit  and  excessive  modernness, 
but  it  lacks  all  the  elements  that  make  for  permanence — beauty 
of  style,  distinction  of  phrase,  and,  most  of  all,  fidelity  to  the 
deeper  truths  of  life.  It  imparts  to  its  reader  little  save  a  mo 
mentary  titillation  and  the  demand  for  more.  It  deals  only 
with  the  superficial  and  the  coarsely  attractive,  and  we  feel  it 
is  so  because  of  its  author's  limitations,  because  he  knows  little 
of  the  deeps  of  character,  of  sacrifice,  of  love  in  the  genuine 
sense,  of  the  fundamental  stuff  of  which  all  great  literature  has 
been  woven.  'He  is  the  maker  of  extravaganzas,  of  Zenda  ro 
mances,  of  preposterous  combinations  like  A  Soldier  of  Fortune, 
which  is  true  neither  to  human  nature  nor  to  any  possibility  of 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          381 

terrestrial  geography;  he  is  a  special  correspondent  with  facile 
pen  who  tells  nothing  new  and  nothing  authoritative — a  man 
of  the  mere  to-day,  and  with  the  mere  to-day  he  will  be  for 
gotten.  Were  he  but  an  isolated  case  such  criticism  were  un 
necessary  ;  he  might  be  omitted  from  our  study ;  but  he  is  the 
type  of  a  whole  school,  a  school  indeed  that  bids  fair  to  exert 
enormous  influence  upon  the  literature,  especially  upon  the  fic 
tion,  of  the  period  that  is  to  come. 

VIII 

Thus  the  fiction  of  the  period  has  expressed  itself  prevailingly 
in  short-breathed  work.  Compared  with  the  fiction  of  France 
or  England  or  Russia,  with  the  major  work  of  Balzac  or  Thack 
eray  or  Tolstoy,  it  has  been  a  thing  of  seeming  fragments.  In 
stead  of  writing  "the  great  American  novel,"  which  was  so 
eagerly  looked  for  during  all  the  period,  its  novelists  have  pre 
ferred  to  cultivate  small  social  areas  and  to  treat  even  these  by 
means  of  brief  sketches. 

The  reasons  are  obvious.  American  life  during  the  periocj 
was  so  heterogeneous,  so  scattered,  that  it  has  been  impossibly 
to  comprehend  any  large  part  of  it  in  a  single  study.  The  novel-} 
ist  who  would  express  himself  prevailingly  in  the  larger  units 
of  fiction,  like  Henry  James,  for  instance,  or  F.  Marion  Craw 
ford,  has  been  forced  to  take  his  topics  from  European  life.  The' 
result  has  been  narrowness,  cameos  instead  of  canvases,  shortj 
stories  rather  than  novels.  In  a  period  that  over  enormous, 
areas  was  transforming  thousands  of  discordant  elements  into, 
what  was  ultimately  to  be  a  unity,  nothing  else  was  possible. 
Short  stories  were  almost  imperative.  He  who  would  deal  with 
crude  characters  in  a  bare  environment  can  not  prolong  his  story 
without  danger  of  attenuation.  The  failure  of  Miss  Murfree, 
and  indeed  of  nearly  all  of  the  short  story  writers  when  they 
attempted  to  expand  their  compressed  and  carefully  wrought 
tales  into  novels,  has  already  been  dwelt  upon. 

But  shortness  of  unit  is  not  a  fault.  The  brevity  of  the  form, 
revealing  as  it  does  with  painful  conspicuousness  all  inferior 
elements,  has  resulted  in  an  excellence  of  workmanship  that  has 
made  the  American  short  story  the  best  art  form  of  its  kind  to 
be  found  in  any  literature.  The  richness  of  the  materials  used 
has  also  raised  the  quality  of  the  output.  The  picturesqueness 


382  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

of  American  life  during  the  period  has  made  possible  themes 
of  absorbing  interest  and  unusual  vividness  of  picturing,  and 
the  elemental  men  and  passions  found  in  new  and  isolated  areas 
have  furnished  abundance  of  material  for  characterization. 
Until  the  vast  field  of  American  life  becomes  more  unified  and 
American  society  becomes  less  a  matter  of  provincial  varieties, 
the  short  story  will  continue  to  be  the  unit  of  American  fiction. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

FRANK  RICHARD  STOCKTON.  (1834-1902.)  Ting-a-ling  Stories,  1869; 
Roundabout  Papers,  1872;  The  Home,  1872;  What  Might  Have  Been  Ex 
pected,  1874;  Tales  Out  of  School,  1875;  Rudder  Grange,  1879;  A  Jolly 
Fellowship,  1880;  The  Floating  Prince,  1881;  The  Story  of  Viteau,  1884; 
The  Lady,  or  the  Tigerf  and  Other  Stories,  1884;  The  Casting  Away  of 
Mrs.  Leeks  and  Mrs.  Aleshine,  1886;  A  Christmas  Wreck  and  Other 
Stories,  1886;  The  Late  Mrs.  Null,  1886;  The  Hundredth  Man,  1887;  The 
Bee  Man  of  Orne,  1887;  The  Dusantes,  1888;  Amos  Kilbright,  1888; 
Personally  Conducted,  1889;  The  Great  War  Syndicate,  1889;  Ardis 
Claverden,  1890;  Stories  of  Three  Burglars,  1890;  The  Merry  Chanter, 
1890;  The  Squirrel  Inn,  1891;  The  House  of  Martha,  1891;  Kutldi-r 
Grangers  Abroad,  1891;  The  Clocks  of  Rondaine,  1892;  The  Watch-Mak 
er's  Wife,  1893;  Pomona's  Travels,  1894;  The  Adventures  of  Captain  Horn, 
1895;  Mrs.  Cliff's  Yacht,  1896;  Stories  of  New  Jersey,  1896;  A  Storu-T,  ti 
er's  Pack,  1897;  The  Great  Stone  of  Sardis,  1898;  The  Girl  at  Cobhurst, 
1898;  Buccaneers  and  Pirates  of  Our  Coast,  1898;  The  Vizier  of  the  Two- 
Horned  Alexander,  1899;  The  Associate  Hermits,  1899;  A  Bicycle  of 
Cat hnif,  1900;  Afield  and  Afloat,  1900;  The  Novels  and  Stories  of  Frank 
R.  Stockton,  Shenandoah  Edition,  18  vols.,  1900;  Kate  Bonnet,  190-J. 

GRACE  KING.  (1852 .)  Monsieur  Motte,  1888;  Earthlinas  [in 

Lipjnncott's  Magazine];  Tales  of  a  Time  and  Place,  1892;  Jean  Baptiste 
Le  Moyne,  'Sieur  de  Bienville  [Makers  of  American  Series],  1892;  Balcony 
Stories,  1893;  History  of  Louisiana  [with  J.  R.  Ficklen],  1894;  New  Or 
leans,  the  Place  and  the  People,  1895;  De  Soto  and  His  Mm  in  th<  l.nn<l 
of  Florida,  1898;  Stories  from  Louisiana  History  [\\ith  J.  K.  Ficklfii,. 
1905. 

KATE  CHOPIN.  (1851-1904.)  At  Fault,  a  \nrrl,  1890;  Bayou  Folk, 
1894;  A  Night  in  Acadie  and  Other  Stories,  1897;  The  Awakening,  a 
Novel,  1899. 

JAMES  LANE  ALLEN.  (1849 .)  Flute  and  Violin,  and  Other 

Kentucky  Tales  and  Romances,  1891;  The  Bhn--<i'rux*  AYf/ion  of  Kentucky, 
1892;  John  Gray:  a  Kentucky  Tale  of  //•••  <H,i,  n  Time,  1808]  .1  Kentucky 
Cardinal:  a  Story,  1894;  Aftermath:  Part  Tico  of  a  Kniturkji  Cardinal, 
ls!t.">;  Summer  in  Arcady :  a  Tale  of  Nature,  1896;  The  Choir  Invisible, 
ls«.)7;  The  Reign  of  Laic:  a  Tale  of  the  Kentucky  lh-mj>  Fields,  1900;  The 
Mettle  of  the  Pasture,  1903;  The  Bride  of  tin-  Misth'toe,  1909;  The  Doc 
tor's  Christmas  Eve,  1910;  A  Heroine  in  Bronze,  1912. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY          383 

HAMLIN  GABLAND.  (1860 .)  Main-Traveled  Roads:  Six  Missis 
sippi  Valley  Stories,  1891;  Jason  Edwards:  an  Average  Man,  1892;  Little 
Norsk;  or,  01'  Pap's  Flaxen,  1892;  Member  of  the  Third  House:  a  Dra 
matic  Story,  1892;  A  Spoil  of  Office:  a  Story  of  the  Modern  West,  1892; 
Prairie  Folks:  or,  Pioneer  Life  on  the  Western  Prairies,  in  Nine  Stories, 
1893;  Prairie  Songs,  1893;  Crumbling  Idols:  Essays  on  Art,  Dealing 
Chiefly  with  Literature,  Painting,  and  the  Drama,  1894;  Rose  of  Dutcher's 
Coolly,  1895;  Wayside  Courtships,  1897;  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  His  Life  and 
Character,  1898 ;  The  Spirit  of  Sweetwater,  1898 ;  Boy  Life  on  the  Prairie, 
1899;  The  Trail  of  the  Gold-Seekers :  Record  of  Travel  in  Prose  and  Verse, 
1899;  The  Eagle's  Heart,  1900;  Her  Mountain  Lover,  1901;  The  Captain 
of  the  Grayhorse  Troop,  1902;  Hesper,  1903;  The  Light  of  the  Star,  1904; 
The  Tyranny  of  the  Dark,  1905;  Witch's  Gold:  New  Version  of  the  Spirit 
of  Stillwater,  1906;  Money  Magic,  1907;  The  Long  Trail,  1907;  The 
Shadow  World,  1908;  Moccasin  Ranch,  a  Story  of  Dakota,  1909;  collected 
edition,  ten  volumes,  1909;  Cavanagh,  Forest  Ranger,  1910;  Other  Main- 
Traveled  Roads,  1910;  Victor  Ollnee's  Discipline,  1911. 

ALICE  FRENCH,  "OCTAVE  THANET."     (1850 .)     Knitters  in  the  Sun, 

1887;  Expiation,  1890;  We  All,  1891;  Otto  the  Knight  and  Other  Trans- 
Mississippi  Stories,  1891;  Stories  of  a  Western  Town,  1892;  Adventures 
in  Photography,  1893;  The  Missionary  Sheriff:  Incidents  in  the  Life  of  a 
Plain  Man  Who  Tried  to  Do  His  Duty,  1897;  The  Book  of  True  Lovers, 
1897;  The  Heart  of  Toil,  1898;  A  Slave  to  Duty  and  Other  Women,  1898; 
A  Captured  Dream  and  Other  Stories,  1899;  The  Man  of  the  Hour,  1905; 
The  Lion's  Share,  1907;  By  Inheritance,  1910;  Stories  That  End  Well. 
1911;  A  Step  on  the  Stair,  1913. 

ROWLAND  EVANS  ROBINSON.  (1833-1900.)  Uncle  Lisha's  Shop:  Life 
in  a  Corner  of  Yankeeland,  1887;  Sam  Lovel's  Camp:  Uncle  Lisha's 
Friends  Under  Bark  and  Canvas,  1889;  Vermont:  a  Study  in  Independence, 
1892;  Danvis  Folks,  1894;  In  New  England  Woods  and  Fields,  1896;  Uncle 
Lisha's  Outing,  1897;  Hero  of  Ticonderoga,  1898;  A  Danvis  Pioneer,  1900; 
Sam  Lovel's  Boy,  1901;  In  the  Greenwood,  1904;  Hunting  Without  a  Gun 
and  Other  Papers,  1905;  Out  of  Bondage  and  Other  Stories,  1905. 

PHILANDER    DEMING.      (1829 .)     Adirondack    Stories,     1880,     1886; 

Tompkins  and  Other  Folks:  Stories  of  the  Hudson  and  the  Adirondacks, 
1885.  . 

,r  AMBROSE  BIERCE.  (1842-1914.)  Cobwebs  from  an  Empty  Skull,  1874; 
fche  Monk  and  the  Hangman's  Daughter  [with  Gustav  Adolph  Danzinger], 
1892;  Tales  of  Soldiers  and  Civilians  [later  changed  to  In  the  Midst  of 
Life],  1892;  Black  Beetles  in  Amber,  1895;  Can  Such  Things  Be?  1894; 
Fantastic  Fables,  1899;  Shapes  of  Clay,  1903;  The  Cynic's  Word  Book, 
1906;  Son  of  the  Gods  and  a  Horseman  in  the  Sky,  1907;  The  Shadow  on 
the  Dial  and  Other  Essays,  1909;  Write  It  Right:  Little  Blacklist  of  Lit 
erary  Faults,  1909;  Collected  Works.  Twelve  Volumes.  1909-12. 
(  RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS.  (1864-1916.)  j  Gallagher  and  Other  Stories, 
1891;  Stories  for  Boys,  1891;  Van  Bibber  and  Others,  1892;  The  West 
from  a  Car  Window,  1892;  Rulers  of  the  Mediterranean,  1894;  Exiles  and 
Other  Stories,  1894;  Our  English  Cousins,  1894;  Princess  Aline,  1895; 


384  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

About  Part*,  1895;  Cinderella  and  Other  Stories,  1896;  Three  Gringos  in 
I  «/i,:uf/a  and  Central  America,  189(5;  Cuba  in  War  Time,  1897;  Soldiers 
rtune,  1897;  A  Year  from  a  Reporter's  Notebook,  1898;  The  King's 
./ri«7,-ri/,  1898;  The  Lion  and  the  Unicorn,  1899;  Novels  and  Stories,  six 
volumes,  1899;  With  Both  Armies  in  South  Africa,  1900;  In  the  Fog, 
;  rnj.tmn  Marklin.  1902;  Hanson's  Fo//t/,  1902;  The  Bar  Sinister, 
-.  J/tss  Cirf/uafion:  a  Comedy,  190r>;  /,*,///  Soldiers  of  Fortune,  1906; 
Farces,  1906;  Tfce  Scarlet  Car,  i907;  TVie  Congo  and  Coasfs  o/  Africa, 
1907;  Vera,  f/ir  .Urdtum,  1908;  IV/nfr  Ui>r,  1909;  Once  upon  a  Time, 
1910;  Tfee  Dictator,  a  Farce,  1910;  Galloper,  a  Comedy,  1910;  Tfce  Consul, 
1911;  The  Man  Who  Could  not  Lose,  1911;  The  Red  Cross  Girl,  1912;  The 
Lost  Road,  1913;  With  the  Allies,  1914. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

SHIFTING   CURRENTS  OF   FICTION 


In  1870  American  fiction  ran  in  two  currents:  fiction  of  the 
Atlantic  type,  read  by  the  cultivated  few,  and  fiction  of  Bon- 
ner's  New  York  Ledger  type,  read  openly  by  the  literate  masses 
and  surreptitiously  by  many  others.  There  was  also  a  very 
large  class  of  readers  that  read  no  novels  at  all.  Puritanism 
had  frowned  upon  fiction,  the  church  generally  discountenanced 
it,  and  in  many  places  prejudice  ran  deep.  George  Gary  Eggle- 
ston  in  the  biography  of  his  brother  has  recorded  his  own 
experience : 

It  will  scarcely  be  believed  by  many  in  the  early  years  of  the  twen 
tieth  century,  that  as  late  as  the  end  of  the  third  quarter  of  the  nine 
teenth,  there  still  survived  a  bitter  prejudice  against  novels  as  demor 
alizing  literature,  and  that  even  short  stories  were  looked  upon  with 
doubt  and  suspicion.  .  .  .  When  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster  began  to 
appear,  a  member  of  the  publishing  house  was  sorely  troubled.  He 
had  been  a  bitter  arid  vehement  opponent  of  novels  and  novel  reading. 
He  had  published  articles  of  his  own  in  denunciation  of  fiction  and  in 
rebuke  of  his  friends  in  a  great  publishing  house  for  putting  forth 
literature  of  that  character.  He  now  began  to  suspect  that  The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster  was  in  fact  a  novel,  and  he  was  shocked  at  the 
thought  that  it  was  appearing  in  a  periodical  published  by  him 
self.  .  .  .  When  the  story  was  about  to  appear  in  book  form  Edward 
wrote  "A  Novel"  as  a  sub-title,  and  the  publisher  referred  to  was  again 
in  a  state  of  nervous  agitation.  He  could  in  no  wise  consent  to  pro 
claim  himself  as  a  publisher  of  novels.  In  view  of  the  large  advance 
orders  for  the  book  he  was  eager  to  publish  the  novel,  but  he  could 
not  reconcile  himself  to  the  open  admission  that  it  was  a  novel.1 

While  The  Bread-Winners  was  running  its  anonymous  course 
in  the  Century  in  1884,  its  author,  now  known  to  have  been  John 
Hay,  felt  called  upon  to  issue  an  explanatory  note: 

i  The  First  of  the  Hoosiers,  343.  See  also  the  editorial  on  novel-reading 
Berliner's  Mo.,  4:493. 

385 


386  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

I  am  engaged  in  business  in  which  my  standing  would  be  seriously 
compromised  it'  it  were  known  I  had  written  a  novel.  I  am  sure  that 
my  practical  efficiency  is  not  lessened  by  this  act,  but  I  am  equally 
sure  that  I  could  never  recover  from  the  injury  it  would  occasion  me 
if  known  among  my  own  colleagues.  For  that  positive  reason,  and 
for  the  negative  one  that  I  do  not  care  for  publicity,  I  resolved  to  keep 
the  knowledge  of  my  little  venture  in  authorship  restricted  to  as  small 
a  circle  as  possible.  Only  two  persons  besides  myself  know  who  wrote 
The  Bread-Winners. 

The  final  breaking  down  of  this  prejudice  and  the  building 
up  of  the  new  clientele  of  readers  that  at  length  gave  prose  fic 
tion  its  later  enormous  vogue  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
phenomena  of  the  period.  The  novel  gained  its  present  re 
spectability  as  a  literary  form  by  what  may  be  called  an  artifice. 
It  came  in  disguised  as  moral  instruction,  as  character-building 
studies  of  life,  as  historical  narrative,  as  reform  propaganda. 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  which  had  been  read  by  thousands  who  had 
never  opened  a  novel  before,  had  begun  the  work.  The  Iloosier 
Schoolmaster  was  allowed  to  appear  in  the  columns  of  Hearth 
and  Home  because  it  was  a  moral  tale  for  children  and  because 
it  was  written  by  a  minister  whose  motives  no  one  could  ques 
tion.  So  with  the  works  of  the  Rev.  E.  P.  Roe,  and  the  stories 
of  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland,  who  had  gained  an  enormous  following 
with  his  series  of  lay  sermons  published  under  the  name  of 
Timothy  Titcomb. 

Perhaps  Dr.  Holland,  more  than  any  other  writer  of  the  time, 
is  responsible  for  this  rehabilitation  of  the  novel.  He  under 
stood  the  common  people.  His  own  origin  had  been  humble — 
the  son  of  a  mechanic  of  western  Massachusetts,  blessed  with 
poverty,  educated  through  his  own  efforts,  enabled  after  a  long 
struggle  to  take  a  medical  diploma — educator,  school  teacher, 
superintendent  of  schools  in  Vicksburg,  Mississippi,  and  finally, 
under  Samuel  Bowles,  assistant  editor  of  the  Springfield,  Massa 
chusetts,  Republican,  which,  largely  through  his  efforts,  arose  to 
national  importance.  He  was  forty  when  the  Timothy  Titcomb 
letters  entered  upon  their  enormous  popularity — it  is  estimated 
that  nearly  half  a  million  copies  of  the  series  were  sold  first  and 
last;  he  was  fifty  when  he  established  Scribner's  Monthly  and 
assumed  its  editorship. 

Scribner's  under  his  direction  became  for  the  new  period 
what  the  Atlantic  Monthly  had  been  for  the  period  before.  He 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  387 

was  a  moralist,  a  plain  man  of  the  people,  and  he  knew  his 
clientele;  he  knew  the  average  American  reader  that  makes  up 
the  great  democratic  mass,  the  reader  who  had  bought  The  Wide, 
Wide  World,  and  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  and  the  Titcomb  Letters. 
He  gave  them  first  of  all  a  serial  novel  by  the  Rev.  George  Mac- 
Donald,  and  he  printed  at  the  close  of  the  first  volume  of  the 
Monthly  a  letter  from  a  reader,  sample  of  thousands  which  had 
filled  his  mail.  Here  is  an  extract : 

I  know  of  no  writings  better  calculated  than  his  [MacDonald's]  to 
draw  out  what  is  noble  and  true  in  the  reader,  or  call  forth  fine  feelings 
and  high  resolves.  They  give  impulse  to  life.  We  come  away  from 
reading  one  of  his  books  stronger  and  better  prepared  for  our  life- 
work.  Is  not  this  the  surest  test  of  excellence  in  a  book? 

It  was  this  purpose  that  inspired  his  own  fiction,  Arthur 
Bonnicastle,  Nicholas  Minturn,  and  the  others,  earnest,  moral 
tales  sprinkled  freely  with  sentiment,  wholesome,  but  not  high 
in  literary  merit.  No  other  man  did  so  much  to  direct  the 
period  into  the  well-known  channels  which  it  took.  His  whole 
influence  was  democratic.  He  would  publish  literature  for  the 
people,  and  to  him  literature  was  a  serious  thing,  the  voice  of 
life.  The  group  of  new  authors  which  he  gathered  about  him 
is  comparable  only  with  the  group  that  James  T.  Fields  gath 
ered  about  himself  in  the  earlier  golden  days  of  the  Atlantic. 

II 

The  period  of  moralizing  fiction  culminated  with  the  work  of 
the  Rev.  Edward  Payson  Roe,  whose  first  novel,  Barriers  Burned 
Away  (1872),  with  its  background  of  the  great  Chicago  fire,  and 
its  tense  moral  atmosphere  which  skilfully  concealed  its  sen 
sationalism  and  its  plentiful  sentiment,  became  enormously 
popular.  When  its  author  died  in  1888  his  publishers  estimated 
that  1,400,000  copies  of  all  his  novels  had  been  sold,  not  count 
ing  pirated  editions  in  many  foreign  languages,  and  the  sale  of 
the  books  has  been  steady  up  to  the  present  time. 

Roe,  like  Holland,  had  sprung  from  the  common  people  and 
had  been  largely  self-educated.  For  a  time  he  had  attended 
Williams  College,  Massachusetts,  he  had  enlisted  for  the  war  as 
the  chaplain  of  a  regiment,  and  after  the  war  had  settled  down 
as  pastor  of  the  First  Church  at  Highland  Falls,  New  York. 


388  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

After  nine  years  his  health  failed  him  and  he  betook  himself 
to  an  out-of-doors  life,  fruit  raising  at  Cornwall-on-Hudson, 
and  his  experience  he  embodied  in  several  practical  handbooks 
like  Success  with  Small  Fruits,  first  published  serially  in  Scrib- 
ner's.  The  last  years  of  his  life  he  gave  to  fiction,  turning  it 
out  with  facility  and  in  quantity  and  always  with  the  theory 
that  he  was  thereby  continuing  his  work  as  a  pastor.  ''My 
books,"  he  wrote,  "are  read  by  thousands;  my  voice  reached  at 
most  but  a  few  hundred.  My  object  in  writing,  as  in  preaching, 
is  to  do  good ;  and  the  question  is,  Which  can  I  do  best?  I  think 
with  the  pen,  and  I  shall  go  on  writing  no  matter  what  the  critics 
say."2 

That  his  novels  are  lacking  in  the  higher  elements  of  literary 
art,  in  structure  and  style  and  creative  imagination,  is  apparent 
even  to  the  uncritical,  but  that  they  are  lacking  in  truth  to  life 
and  power  to  move  the  reader  no  one  can  declare.  At  every 
point  they  are  wholesome  and  manly.  Roe's  assertion  that  he 
worked  with  reverence  in  the  fundamental  stuff  of  life  one  must 
admit  or  else  deny  his  contention  that,  "The  chief  evidence  of 
life  in  a  novel  is  the  fact  that  it  lives."3  Surely  it  must  be 
admitted  that  few  novels  of  the  period  have  shown  more  vitality. 

His  influence  has  been  considerable.  With  Holland  and  his 
school  he  helped  greatly  in  the  building  up  of  that  mass  of  novel 
readers,  mostly  women  it  must  be  said,  which  by  the  middle  of 
the  eighties  had  reached  such  enormous  proportions.  He  led 
readers  on  to  Lew  Wallace's  The  Fair  God  and  Ben  Ilur,  and  to 
the  novels  of  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett,  who  added  to  the  con 
ventional  devices  of  Holland  and  Roe — sentiment,  sensation, 
love-centered  interest  culminating  inevitably  in  marriage  at  the 
close  of  the  story — literary  art  and  a  certain  dramatic  power. 
She  was  realistic  in  method, — her  That  Lass  o'  Lowrie's  (1877) 
reproduced  the  Lancashire  dialect  in  all  its  uncouthness — but  the 
atmosphere  of  her  work  was  romantic.  Her  Little  Lord  Faunt- 
leroy  (1886),  unquestionably  the  most  successful  juvenile  of  the 
period,  has  been  described  as  "a  fairy  tale  of  real  life."  All  of 
her  books,  indeed,  have  this  fairy  tale  basis.  She  has  been  exceed 
ingly  popular,  but  she  cannot  be  counted  among  the  original 
forces  of  the  period.  From  her  the  current  of  popularity  flowed 

•Roe's  E.  P.  Roe.    Reminiscences  of  His  Life,  127. 

•See  E.  P.  Roe's  "The  Element  of  Life  in  Fiction."    Forum,  5:  226. 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  389 

on  to  F.  Marion  Crawford's  cosmospolitan  work,  to  Margaret 
Deland's  strong  problem  novel  John  Ward,  Preacher;  then  it 
swelled  into  a  flood  with  David  Harum  and  the  historical  novels 
that  made  notable  the  nineties.  At  the  close  of  the  century  fic 
tion  was  read  by  all  and  in  quantities  that  seem  incredible. 

Ill 

In  a  chapter  which  traces  the  growth  of  the  novel,  in  dis 
tinction  from  the  growth  of  the  sketch  or  the  short  story,  F. 
Marion  Crawford  must  be  given  a  leading  place.  Of  all  Ameri 
can  writers  he  devoted  himself  most  fully  to  the  major  form  of 
fiction.  He  wrote  forty-five  novels,  and  few  sketches  and  short 
stories:  he  was  a  novelist  and  only  a  novelist.  He  appeared  at 
the  one  moment  when  the  type  of  fiction  which  he  represented 
was  most  certain  of  wide  recognition.  His  earliest  book,  Mr. 
Isaacs  (1882),  dealt  with  a  new,  strange  environment — India, 
five  years  before  Kipling  made  it  his  background ;  it  had  a  reli 
gious  atmosphere — the  mystic  beliefs  of  the  Orient;  and  it  told 
a  story  with  sentiment  and  with  dramatic  movement.  Zoroas 
ter,  with  its  opening  sentence,  "The  hall  of  the  banquets  was 
made  ready  for  the  feast  in  the  palace  of  Babylon,"  appealed 
to  an  audience  that  had  rated  Ben  Hur  among  the  greatest  of 
novels. 

But  the  earliest  books  of  Crawford  showed  little  of  the  main 
current  of  his  work.  No  two  novelists  could  differ  more  radi- 
cally  than  he  and  Roe.  To  him  the  purpose-novel  was  a  bastard 
thing  unworthy  the  powers  of  a  true  artist. 

Lessons,  lectures,  discussions,  sermons,  and  didactics  generally  belong 
to  institutions  set  apart  for  especial  purposes  and  carefully  avoided, 
after  a  certain  age,  by  the  majority  of  those  who  wish  to  be  amused. 
The  purpose-novel  is  an  odious  attempt  to  lecture  people  who  hate  lec 
tures,  to  preach  to  people  who  prefer  their  own  church,  and  to 
teach  people  who  think  they  know  enough  already.  It  is  an  ambush, 
a  lying-in-wait  for  the  unsuspecting-  public,  a  violation  of  the  social 
contract — and  as  such  it  ought  to  be  either  mercilessly  crushed  or 
forced  by  law  to  bind  itself  in  black  and  label  itself  "Purpose"  in  very 
big  letters.4 

The  office  of  the  novel  was,  therefore,  entertainment  and  only 
entertainment.  He  has  been  the  chief  exponent  in  America  of 

*  The  Novel:  What  It  Is.     17. 


390  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

art  for  art's  sake.  A  novel,  he  maintained,  is  a  little  "pocket- 
'•"  whose  only  office  is  to  please. 

The  life  and  the  training  of  Crawford  gave  him  a  viewpoint 
which  was  singularly  different  from  that  held  by  the  short  story 
writers  who  were  so  busily  exploiting  provincial  little  neighbor 
hoods  in  all  the  remote  nooks  and  corners  of  the  land.  His 
training  had  given  him  an  outlook  more  cosmopolitan  than  even 
that  of  Henry  James.  He  had  been  born  at  Bagni-di-Lucca, 
in  Tuscany,  son  of  Thomas  Crawford  the  sculptor,  and  he  had 
spent  the  first  eleven  years  of  his  life  in  Rome.  Later  he  had 
studied  at  Concord,  New  Hampshire;  at  Trinity  College,  Cam 
bridge  ;  at  Karlsruhe,  at  Heidelberg ;  and  finally  at  Rome,  where 
he  had  specialized  in  the  classics.  In  1873  he  was  at  Allaha 
bad,  India,  connected  with  the  Indian  Herald,  and  later  on,  his 
health  failing,  he  visited  his  uncle  in  New  York,  Samuel  Ward, 
brother  of  Julia  Ward  Howe,  and  at  his  advice  threw  some  of 
his  Indian  experiences  into  the  form  of  fiction.  The  instant 
success  of  Mr.  Isaacs  determined  his  career.  After  extensive 
travels  in  Turkey  and  elsewhere,  he  settled  down  in  Italy  in  a 
picturesque  villa  overlooking  the  Bay  of  Naples,  and  there  he 
spent  the  remaining  years  of  his  life,  years  of  enormous  literary 
productivity,  and  of  growing  popularity  with  readers  both  in 
America  and  in  Europe. 

No  other  American  novelist  has  ever  covered  so  much  of  ter 
ritory.  He  wrote  with  first-hand  knowledge  of  life  in  America, 
in  England,  in  Germany,  in  Italy,  in  Constantinople,  and  India, 
and  he  wrote  with  scholarly  accuracy  historical  novels  dealing 
with  times  and  places  as  diverse  as  Persia  in  the  times  of 
Zoroaster;  as  the  second  crusade — Via  Crucis;  as  the  era  of 
Philip  II  in  Spain — In  the  Palace  of  the  King;  as  Venice  in  the 
Middle  Ages — Marietta,  a  Maid  of  Venice;  as  early  Arabia — 
Kahled;  and  as  early  Constantinople — Arethusa. 

The  heart  of  his  work  undoubtedly  is  made  up  of  the  fifteen 
novels  that  deal  with  life  in  Rome  and  its  environs:  Sara- 
cinesca,  Sant'  Ilario,  Don  Orsino,  Taquisara,  Corleone,  Casa 
Braccio,  A  Roman  Singer,  Marzio's  Crucifix,  Heart  of  Rome, 
Cecilia,  Whosoever  Shall  Offend,  Pietro  Ghisleri,  To  Leeward, 
A  Lady  of  Rome,  and  The  White  Sister.  The  novels  deal  almost 
exclusively  with  the  middle  and  higher  classes  of  Rome,  classes 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  391 

of  which  most  Americans  know  nothing  at  all,  for,  to  quote  from 
the  opening  chapter  of  To  Leeward: 

There  are  two  Romes.  There  is  the  Rome  of  the  intelligent  for 
eigner,  consisting  of  excavations,  monuments,  tramways,  hotels,  typhoid 
fever,  incense,  and  wax  candles;  and  there  is  the  Rome  within,  a  city 
of  antique  customs,  good  and  bad,  a  town  full  of  aristocratic  preju 
dices,  of  intrigues,  of  religion,  of  old-fashioned  honor  and  new-fash 
ioned  scandal,  of  happiness  and  unhappiness,  of  just  people  and 
unjust. 

It  is  this  other  half  Rome,  unknown  to  the  casual  tourist, 
unknown  to  any  not  native  born  and  Romanist  in  faith,  that  he 
has  shown  us,  as  Howells  attempted  to  show  the  social  life  of 
Boston  and  New  England,  and  as  Cable  sought  to  enter  the  heart 
of  Creole  New  Orleans.  With  what  success?  Those  who  know 
most  of  Roman  life  have  spoken  with  praise.  He  has  given  to 
his  aristocracy  perhaps  too  much  of  charm,  they  say;  too  much 
of  inflexible  will,  it  may  be;  too  much  of  fire  and  fury;  yet  on 
the  whole  he  has  been  true  to  the  complex  life  he  has  sought 
to  reproduce,  truer,  perhaps,  than  Howells  has  been  to  Boston 
or  Cable  to  New  Orleans,  for  he  has  worked  from  the  inside 
as  one  native  born,  as  one  reared  in  the  society  he  describes,  even 
to  the  detail  of  accepting  its  religious  belief.  One  may  well 
believe  it,  for  everywhere  in  the  novels  is  the  perfection  of  natu 
ralness,  the  atmosphere  of  reality. 

With  his  seven  stories  of  American  life,  An  American  Poli 
tician  and  the  others,  he  is  less  convincing.  He  wrote  as  a 
foreigner,  as  an  observer  of  the  outward  with  no  fullness  of 
sympathy,  no  depth  of  knowledge.  He  was  European  in  view 
point  and  in  experience,  and  he  knew  better  the  European  back 
ground — Germany  as  in  Greifenstein  and  The  Cigarette-Maker's 
Romance,  or  England  as  in  The  Tale  of  a  Lonely  Parish,  or  even 
Constantinople  as  in  Paul  Patoff. 

He  wins  us  first  with  his  worldliness,  his  vast  knowledge  of 
the  surfaces  of  life  in  all  lands.  He  is  full  of  cosmopolitan 
comparisons,  wisdom  from  everywhere,  modern  instances  from 
Stamboul  and  Allahabad  and  Rome.  To  read  him  is  like  walk 
ing  through  foreign  scenes  with  a  fully  informed  guide,  a  mar 
velous  guide,  indeed,  a  patrician,  a  polished  man  of  the  world. 
Everywhere  in  his  work  an  atmosphere  of  good  breeding — • 


392  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

charming  people  of  culture  and  wideness  of  experience:  diplo 
mats,  artists,  statesmen,  noblemen,  gentlemen  of  the  world  and 
ladies  indeed.  There  is  no  coarseness,  no  dialect,  no  uncouth 
characters.  We  are  in  the  world  of  wealth,  of  old-established 
institutions,  of  traditions  and  social  laws  that  are  inflexible.  In 
the  telling  of  the  tale  he  has  but  a  single  purpose: 

We  are  not  poets,  because  we  can  not  be.  We  are  not  genuine  play- 
writers  for  many  reasons;  chiefly,  perhaps,  because  we  are  not  clever 
enough,  since  a  successful  play  is  incomparably  more  lucrative  than 
a  successful  novel.  We  are  not  preachers,  and  few  of  us  would  be 
admitted  to  the  pulpit.  We  are  not,  as  a  class,  teachers  or  professors, 
nor  lawyers,  nor  men  of  business.  We  are  nothing  more  than  public 
amusers.  Unless  we  choose  we  need  not  be  anything  less.  Let  us,  then, 
accept  our  position  cheerfully,  and  do  the  best  we  can  to  fulfil  our 
mission,  without  attempting  to  dignify  it  with  titles  too  imposing  for 
it  to  bear,  and  without  degrading  it  by  bringing  its  productions  down 
even  a  little  way,  from  the  lowest  level  of  high  comedy  to  the  highest 
level  of  buffoonery.5 

From  this  standpoint  he  has  succeeded  to  the  full.  He  has 
told  his  stories  well;  he  holds  his  reader's  interest  to  the  end. 
Slight  though  his  stories  may  often  be  in  development,  they  are 
ingenious  always  in  construction  and  they  are  cumulative  in 
interest.  He  has  undoubted  dramatic  power,  sparkling  dia 
logue,  thrust  and  parry,  whole  novels  like  Saracinesca,  for  in 
stance,  that  might  be  transferred  to  the  stage  with  scarcely  an 
alteration.  His  characters  and  episodes  appeal  to  him  always 
from  the  dramatic  side.  The  novel,  indeed,  as  he  defines  it  is 
a  species  of  drama : 

It  may  fairly  be  claimed  that  humanity  has,  within  the  past  hundred 
years,  found  the  way  of  carrying  a  theater  in  its  pocket;  and  so  long 
as  humanity  remains  what  it  is,  it  will  delight  in  taking  out  its  pocket- 
stage  and  watching  the  antics  of  the  actors,  who  are  so  like  itself  and 
yet  so  much  more  interesting.  Perhaps  that  is,  after  all,  the  best  an 
swer  to  the  question,  "What  is  a  novel?"  It  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a 
pocket-stage.  Scenery,  light,  shade,  the  actors  themselves,  are  made 
of  words,  and  nothing  but  words,  more  or  less  cleverly  put  together. 
A  play  is  good  in  proportion  as  it  represents  the  more  dramatic,  pas 
sionate,  romantic,  or  humorous  sides  of  real  life.  A  novel  is  excellent 
according  to  the  degree  in  which  it  produces  the  illusions  of  a  good 
play — but  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  play  is  the  thing,  and  that 
illusion  is  eminently  necessary  to  success.6 

»  The  Novel:  What  It  Is.     22,  49. 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  393 

Often  he  overdoes  this  dramatic  element  and  becomes  melo 
dramatic  ;  we  lose  the  impression  of  real  life  and  feel  an  atmos 
phere  of  staginess,  that  exaggeration  of  effect  which  thrills  for 
a  moment  and  then  disgusts. 

And  right  here  comes  the  chief  indictment  against  him:  he 
works  without  deep  emotion,  without  tenderness,  without  altru 
ism,  without  the  higher  reaches  of  imagination.  He  has  no 
social  or  moral  purpose,  as  Howells  had.  He  sees  the  body 
but  not  the  soul,  society  rather  than  life  in  its  deeper  cur 
rents,  a  society  marvelously  complex  in  its  requirements  and 
its  accouterments,  its  conventions  and  traditions,  but  he  looks 
little  below  the  superficial,  the  temporal,  the  merely  worldly. 
He  is  inferior  to  Howells  inasmuch  as  he  lacks  poetry,  he  lacks 
humor,  he  lacks  heart.  He  is  inferior  to  James  and  George 
Meredith  inasmuch  as  he  had  no  power  of  introspection  and  no 
distinctive  style.  He  had  no  passion — he  never  becomes  enthu 
siastic  even  about  his  native  Italy;  he  had  little  love  for  nature 
— the  city  engrosses  him,  not  trees  and  mountains  and  lakes. 
He  writes  of  the  human  spectacle  and  is  content  if  he  bring 
amusement  for  the  present  moment. 

He  was,  therefore,  one  more  influence  in  the  journalization 
of  the  novel.  He  wrote  rapidly  and  easily,  and  his  style  is 
clear  and  natural,  but  it  is  also  without  distinction.  His  pic 
tures  are  vividly  drawn  and  his  stories  are  exceedingly  readable 
• — journalistic  excellences,  but  there  is  nothing  of  inspiration 
about  them,  no  breath  of  genius,  no  touch  of  literature  in  the 
stricter  sense  of  that  word.  Like  every  skilful  journalistic 
writer,  he  has  the  power  to  visualize  his  scene,  to  paint  charac 
ters  with  vividness,  and  to  make  essentials  stand  out.  Notably 
was  this  true  of  his  historical  fiction.  Characters  like  Philip 
II.  and  Eleanor,  Queen  of  France,  he  can  make  real  men  and 
women  that  move  and  convince.  He  has  created  a  marvelous 
gallery  of  characters,  taking  his  forty-five  novels  together,  com 
plex  and  varied  beyond  that  produced  by  any  other  American 
novelist,  and  there  are  surprisingly  few  repetitions.  He  stands 
undoubtedly  as  the  most  brilliant  of  the  American  writers  of 
fiction,  the  most  cosmopolitan,  the  most  entertaining.  His 
galaxy  of  Roman  novels,  especially  the  Saracinesca  group,  bids 
fair  to  outlive  many  novels  that  contain  deeper  studies  of  human 
life  and  that  are  more  inspired  products  of  literary  art. 


394  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

IV 

The  direct  opposite  of  F.  Marion  Crawford,  in  literary  belief, 
as  in  background  and  object,  was  Margaretta  Wade  Deland,  whc 
came  into  literary  prominence  at  the  close  of  the  eighties.  Un 
like  Crawford,  she  was  a  poet,  a  realist,  a  depicter  of  life  within 
a  narrow  provincial  area,  and,  moreover,  a  worker  in  the  finer 
materials  of  life,  the  problems  of  the  soul. 

The  essentials  of  her  biography  are  few.  She  was  born  and 
reared  at  Manchester,  a  little  Pennsylvania  village,  now  swal 
lowed  up  by  the  great  manufacturing  city  of  Allegheny;  she 
went  at  sixteen  to  New  York  to  study  drawing  and  design  at 
Cooper  Institute;  and  after  her  graduation  she  became  in- 
structor  in  design  at  the  Girls'  Normal  College,  New  York  City. 
In  1880  she  was  married  to  Lorin  F.  Deland  and  removed  to 
Boston,  where  she  has  since  resided.  In  1886  she  issued  her  first 
book — a  collection  of  poems  entitled  An  Old  Garden,  and  two 
years  later  John  Ward,  Preacher,  a  novel  that  attracted  instant 
and  widespread  attention  because  of  its  likeness  in  theme  to 
Robert  Elsmere,  then  at  the  height  of  its  enormous  vogue. 
Since  that  time  she  has  published  four  other  major  novels: 
Sidney,  Philip  and  His  Wife,  The  Awakening  of  Helena  Richie, 
and  The  Iron  Woman,  and  many  short  stories,  notably  the  col 
lections  entitled  The  Wisdom  of  Fools,  Old  Chester  Talcs,  and 
Dr.  Lavendar's  People. 

By  nature  and  early  environment  Mrs.  Deland  was  serious 
and  contemplative.  The  little  Pennsylvania  town,  later  to  be 
immortalized  as  Old  Chester,  during  her  childhood  was  a  place 
of  traditions,  a  bit  of  antiquity  amid  the  newness  about  it,  of 
well-bred  old  English  and  Scotch  and  Irish  families  with  deep 
religious  prejudices  and  with  narrow  yet  wholesome  and  kindly 
ideals.  She  was  reared  in  a  religious  atmosphere — her  father 
was  a  Presbyterian  and  her  mother  an  Episcopalian,  the  com 
bination  so  disastrous  in  John  Ward,  Preacher.  She  lived  amid 
books,  all  of  which  she  might  read  save  only  the  novels,  a  pro 
hibition  that  proved  to  be  a  good  one,  for  when  at  last  she  was 
led  to  write  fiction  of  her  own,  she  went  about  it  with  no  con 
ventional  preconceptions.  It  made  for  freshness,  for  originality, 
of  concentration  upon  life  rather  than  upon  form  and  the  tra 
dition  of  the  elders.  It  was  an  environment  that  cultivated  the 
poet  as  well  as  the  Puritan  within  her,  the  sensitiveness  for 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  395 

Nature,  the  deeps  of  love  and  life  that  were  to  find  expression 
in  a  note  like  this,  recorded  in  her  first  volume: 

0  distant  Christ,  the  crowded,  darkening  years 
Drift  slow  between  thy  gracious  face  and  me : 
My  hungry  heart  leans  back  to  look  for  thee, 

But  finds  the  way  set  thick  with  doubts  and  fears. 

My  groping  hands  would  touch  thy  garment's  hein, 
Would  find  some  token  thou  art  walking  near; 
Instead,  they  clasp  but  empty  darkness  drear, 

And  no  diviner  hands  reach  out  to  them. 

My  straining  eyes,  0  Christ,  but  long  to  mark 
A  shadow  of  thy  presence,  dim  and  sweet, 
Or  far-off  light  to  guide  my  wandering  feet, 

Or  hope  for  hands  prayer-beating  'gainst  the  dark. 

It  was,  therefore,  but  natural  that  her  work  should  be  both 
serious  and  ethical  and  that  it  should  be  touched  with  beauty. 
In  John  Ward,  Preacher,  she  took  as  her  theme  the  revolt  of  a 
soul  against  the  infallibilities  of  a  system  of  belief.  It  is  not 
necessarily  a  religious  novel  or  yet  a  purpose  novel.  The  pri 
mary  motif  of  Robert  Elsmere  is  theological  and  doctrinal  dis 
cussion.  It  is  religious  polemic  made  attractive  by  being  cast 
into  story  form  and  as  such  it  deserves  the  anathema  of  Craw 
ford,  but  in  Mrs.  Deland's  novel  the  human  interest  is  para 
mount.  Religion  is  the  force  that  acts  upon  two  lives,  just  as 
jealousy  might  have  been  taken  or  misdirected  love  or  any  other 
human  dynamic,  and  the  novel  is  the  record  of  the  reactions 
under  the  stress. 

So  with  all  her  novels.  The  theme  is  the  destruction  or  the 
redemption  of  a  soul,  the  abasement  or  the  rehabilitation  of  a 
character  through  some  immaterial  force  applied  from  within. 
She  deals  with  great  ethical  and  sociological  forces:  heredity, 
as  in  her  novelette  The  Hands  of  Esau;  divorce,  as  in  The  Iron 
Woman;  the  compelling  power  of  love,  as  in  Sidney.  Her 
primary  aim  is  not,  as  with  Crawford  and  Harte,  simply  to 
entertain ;  it  is  rather  to  expose  the  human  soul  to  its  own  view, 
to  show  it  its  limitations  and  its  dangers,  that  the  soul  may  be 
purged  through  fear  of  what  may  be — the  aim  indeed  of  the 
Greek  drama.  Her  equipment  for  the  work  was  complete.  To 
feminine  tenderness  and  insight  she  added  a  depth  of  view  and 


396  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

an  analysis  that  is  masculine.  She  was  a  poet  too,  but  a  poet 
with  the  severity  of  form  and  the  moving  realism  of  the  short 
story  writer.  Two  of  her  novels,  The  Awakening  of  Helena 
Richie  and  The  Iron  Woman,  have  not  been  surpassed  in  con 
struction  and  in  moving  power  by  any  other  writer  of  the 
period. 

Her  Old  Chester  Tales  also,  with  their  central  figure  Dr. 
Lavendar,  have  the  elements  that  make  for  permanence.  They 
are  really  without  time  or  place.  Old  Chester  undoubtedly  is 
in  western  Pennsylvania,  the  author's  native  town,  but  it  nii^lit 
be  New  England  as  well.  The  tales  deal  with  universal  types 
and  with  universal  motifs  with  a  broadness  and  a  sympathy  and 
a  literary  art  that  raises  them  into  the  realm  of  the  rarer  classics. 
From  them  emerges  the  figure  of  Dr.  Lavendar  to  place  beside 
even  Adams  and  Primrose.  Place  is  not  dwelt  upon ;  humanity 
is  all.  They  are  not  so  much  stories  as  fragments  of  actual 
life  touched  with  the  magic  of  poetry  and  of  ethic  vision.  From 
that  worldly  social  area  of  life  presented  to  us  by  such  latter- 
day  novelists  as  Crawford  and  Edith  Wharton  and  Robert 
Chambers  they  are  as  far  removed  as  is  a  fashionable  Newport 
yacht,  with  its  club-centered  men  and  cigarette-smoking  women, 
from  the  simple  little  hamlet  among  the  hills. 


During  the  closing  years  of  the  century  there  came  into 
American  literature,  suddenly  and  unheralded,  a  group  of  young 
men,  journalists  for  the  most  part,  who  for  a  time  seemed  to 
promise  revolution.  They  brought  in  with  a  rush  enthusiasm, 
vigor,  vitality;  they  had  no  reverence  for  old  forms  or  old 
ideals;  they  wrote  with  fierceness  and  cocksureness  books  like 
Garland's  Crumbling  Idols  and  Norris's  The  Responsibilities  of 
the  Novelist,  which  called  shrilly  for  Truth,  TRUTH:  "Is  it 
not,  in  Heaven's  name,  essential  that  the  people  hear  not  a  lie, 
but  the  Truth?  If  the  novel  were  not  one^f  the  most  im 
portant  factors  of  life;  if  it  were  not  the  coiapletest  expression 
of  our  civilization;  if  its  influence  were  not  greater  than  all 
the  pulpits,  than  all  the  newspapers  between  the  oceans,  it  would 
not  be  so  important  that  its  message  should  be  true."  They 
would  produce  a  new  American  literature,  one  stripped  of 
prudishness  and  convention;  they  would  go  down  among  the 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  397 

People  and  tell  them  the  plain  God's  Truth  as  Zola  defined 
Truth,  for  the  People  were  hungry  for  it.  "In  the  larger  view, 
in  the  last  analysis,  the  People  pronounce  the  final  judgment. 
The  People,  despised  of  the  artist,  hooted,  caricatured,  and  vili 
fied,  are,  after  all,  and  in  the  main,  the  real  seekers  after  Truth." 
The  group  was  a  passing  phenomenon.  Many  of  its  members' 
were  dead  before  they  had  done  more  than  outline  their  work:' 
Wolcott  Balestier  and  Stephen  Crane  at  thirty,  Frank  Norris  at 
thirty-two,  Henry  Harland  and  Harold  Frederic  in  the  early 
forties,  and  the  others,  like  R.  II.  Davis,  for  instance,  turned  at 
length  to  historical  romance  and  other  conventional  fields. 

The  impetus  undoubtedly  came  from  the  enormous  and  sud 
den  vogue  of  Kipling.  Balestier  was  his  brother-in-law  and 
had  collaborated  with  him  in  writing  The  Naulahka.  Then  he 
had  written  the  novel  Benefits  Forgot,  a  work  of  remarkable 
promise,  but  remarkable  only  for  its  promise.  The  vigor  and' 
directness  and  picturing  power  of  the  young  Kipling  were  quali-; 
ties  that  appealed  strongly  to  young  men  of  journalistic  train 
ing.  Like  him,  they  were  cosmopolitans  and  had  seen  unusual- 
areas  of  life.  Crane  had  represented  his  paper  in  the  Greco- 
Turkish  War  and  in  the  Cuban  campaign,  Norris  had  been  in 
the  South  African  War,  Richard  Harding  Davis  had  been  at  all 
the  storm  centers  of  his  time,  Frederic  was  the  European  cor 
respondent  of  the  New  York  Times,  and  Harland  became  at 
length  editor  of  the  London  Yellow  Book. 

The  genius  of  the  group  undoubtedly  was  Stephen  Crane 
(1871-1900).  He  was  frail  of  physique,  neurotic,  intense,  full 
of  a  vibrant  energy  that  drove  him  too  fiercely.  He  was  natu 
rally  lyrical,  romantic,  impulsively  creative,  but  his  training 
made  him,  as  it  made  most  of  the  group,  a  realist — a  depressed 
realist  after  Zola.  His  earliest  work  was  his  best,  Maggie,  a 
Girl  of  the  Streets,  a  grim  and  brutal  picture  of  the  darker 
strata  of  New  York  City — his  most  distinctive  creation.  But 
he  had  no  patience,  no  time,  for  collecting  material.  He  was 
too  eager,  too  much  under  the  dominance  of  moods,  to  investi 
gate,  and  his  later  novel,  The  Red  Badge  of  Courage,  which  pur 
ports  to  be  a  realistic  story  of  army  life  in  the  Civil  War,  is 
based  upon  a  kind  of  manufactured  realism  that  is  the  product 
not  of  observation  or  of  gathered  data,  but  of  an  excessively 
active  imagination.  When  he  died,  though  he  was  but  thirty, 


398  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

he  had  done  his  work.  Despite  his  lyrical  power  and  his  un 
doubted  imagination,  his  place  is  not  large. 

For  Frank  Norris  (1870-1902)  more  may  be  said,  though  un 
doubtedly  he  has  been  judged  by  his  contemporaries  more  by 
what  he  dreamed  of  doing  and  what,  perhaps,  he  might  have 
done  had  he  lived  than  by  his  actual  accomplishment.  He  had 
had  unusual  training  for  the  epic  task  he  set  himself.  He  had 
been  born  in  Chicago  and  had  spent  there  the  first  fifteen  years 
of  his  life,  he  had  been  educated  in  the  San  Francisco  high 
school,  at  the  University  of  California,  and  at  Harvard,  then 
for  a  year  or  two  he  had  studied  art  in  Paris.  Later  he  was  war 
correspondent  of  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle,  then  editor  of 
the  San  Francisco  Wave,  then  special  war  correspondent  for 
McClure's  Magazine  during  the  Spanish  War. 

When  he  began  to  write  fiction,  and  he  began  early,  he  was  an 
ardent  disciple  of  Zola,  a  realist  of  the  latter-day  type,  a  teller 
of  the  Truth  as  Zola  conceived  of  the  Truth.  "Mere  literature" 
was  a  thing  outworn,  graces  of  style  and  gentleness  of  theme 
belonged  to  the  effeminate  past.  A  masculine  age  had  come 
to  which  nothing  was  common  or  unclean  provided  it  were  but 
the  Truth.  Like  Crane,  he  was  eager,  excited,  dominated  by 
his  theme  until  it  became  his  whole  life.  He  could  work  only 
in  major  key,  in  fortissimo,  with  themes  continent-wide  pre 
sented  with  the  Kipling  vigor  and  swing. 

In  his  earlier  work,  Vandover  and  the  Brute,  McTeague,  and 
the  like,  he  swung  to  the  extreme  of  his  theory.  To  tell  the 
truth  was  to  tell  with  microscopic  detail  the  repulsive  things  of 
physical  life.  There  are  stories  of  his  that  reek  with  foul  odors 
and  jangle  repulsively  upon  the  eye  and  the  ear.  The  short 
fiction  "A  Man's  Woman"  is  an  advance  even  upon  Zola.  It 
is  Truth,  but  it  is  the  truth  about  the  processes  of  the  sewer 
and  the  physiological  facts  about  starvation: 

The  tent  was  full  of  foul  smells:  the  smell  of  drugs  and  of  moldy 
gunpowder,  the  smell  of  dirty  rags,  of  unwashed  bodies,  the  smell  of 
stale  smoke,  of  scorching  sealskin,  of  soaked  and  rotting  canvas  that 
exhaled  from  tin-  tent  cover — every  smell  but  that  of  food. 

McTeague  is  a  brutal  book:  it  gets  hold  of  one's  imagination 
and  haunts  it  like  an  odor  from  a  morgue.  So  with  certain 
scenes  from  Vandover  and  the  Brute.  One  sees  for  weeks  the 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  399 

ghastly  face  of  that  drowning  Jew  who,  after  the  wreck  of  the 
steamer,  was  beaten  off  again  and  again  until  his  mashed  fingers 
could  no  longer  gain  a  hold.  True  to  life  it  undoubtedly  is,  but 
to  what  end? 

Norris's  master  work  was  to  be  his  trilogy,  the  epic  of  the 
wheat,  the  allegory  of  financial  and  industrial  America.  He  ex 
plained  his  purpose  in  the  preface  to  The  Pit: 

These  novels,  while  forming  a  series,  will  be  in  no  way  connected 
with  each  other  save  by  their  relation  to  (1)  the  production,  (2)  the 
distribution,  (3)  the  consumption  of  American  wheat.  When  com 
plete  they  will  form  the  story  of  a  crop  of  wheat  from  the  time  of 
its  sowing  as  seed  in  California  to  the  time  of  its  consumption  as 
bread  in  a  village  of  Western  Europe. 

The  first  novel.  The  Octopus,  deals  with  the  war  between  the  wheat 
grower  and  the  Railroad  Trust;  the  second,  The  Pit,  is  the  fictitious 
narrative  of  a  "deal"  in  the  Chicago  wheat  pit;  while  the  third,  The 
Wolf,  will  probably  have  for  its  pivotal  episode  the  relieving  of  a 
famine  in  an  old  world  community. 

He  lived  to  complete  only  the  first  two,  and  it  is  upon  these 
two  that  his  place  as  a  novelist  must  depend.  They  represent 
his  maturer  work,  his  final  manner,  and  they  undoubtedly  show 
what  would  have  been  his  product  had  he  been  spared  to  com 
plete  his  work. 

The  two  books  impress  one  first  with  their  vastness  of  theme. 
The  whole  continent  seems  to  be  in  them.  They  have  an  un 
tamed  power,  an  elemental  quality,  an  unconfined  sweep  that  is 
Russian  in  its  quality.  They  are  epics,  epics  of  a  new  continent 
with  its  untold  richness  in  corn  and  wheat,  its  enmeshing  rail 
roads,  its  teeming  cities  of  the  plain,  its  restless  human  types — 
new  birth  of  our  new  soil.  The  excitement  and  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  novelist  flow  from  every  page.  To  read  long  is  to  be 
filled  with  the  trembling  eagerness  of  the  wheat  pit  and  the 
railroad  yard.  The  style  is  headlong,  excited,  illuminated  hotly 
with  Hugo-like  adjectives.  Through  it  all  runs  a  symbolism 
that  at  times  takes  full  control.  The  railroad  dominates  The 
Octopus,  the  wheat  The  Pit  as  fully  as  the  hemp  dominates 
Allen's  Reign  of  Law.  The  books  are  allegories.  The  Western 
farmer  is  in  the  grip  of  an  octopus-like  monster,  the  railroad, 
that  is  strangling  him.  The  ghastly  horror  of  the  locomotive 
that  plows  at  full  speed  through  a  flock  of  sheep  is  symbolic  of 
his  helplessness. 


400  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

To  the  right  and  left,  all  the  width  of  the  right  of  way,  the  little 
bodies  had  been  Hung;  backs  were  snapped  ai::iinst  the  fence-posts; 
brains  knocked  out.  Caught  in  the  barbs  of  the  wire,  wedged  in,  the 
bodies  hung  suspended.  Under  foot  it  was  terrible;  the  black  blood, 
winking  in  the  starlight,  seeped  down  into  the  clay  between  the  ties  with 
a  long  sucking  murmur.  .  .  .  Abruptly,  Presley  saw  again  in  his  imag 
ination  the  galloping  monster,  the  terror  of  steel  and  steam,  with  its 
single  eye,  cyclopean,  red,  shooting  from  horizon  to  horizon;  but  saw 
it  now  as  the  symbol  of  a  vast  power,  huge,  terrible,  flinging  the  echo 
of  its  thunder  over  all  the  reaches  of  the  valley,  leaving  blood  and 
destruction  in  its  path;  the  leviathan,  with  tentacles  of  steel  clutching 
into  the  soil,  the  soulless  Force,  the  iron-hearted  Power,  the  Monster, 
the  Colossus,  the  Octopus. 

Garland  in  such  pictures  as  " Under  the  Lion's  Paw"  tends 
to  arouse  his  reader  to  mutiny,  to  the  cry  "This  thing  must 
stop ! ' '  Norris  fills  him  with  shuddering  horror  and  leaves  him 
unnerved. 

Tremendous  energy  the  novels  undoubtedly  have  and  truth 
too,  so  far  as  it  goes.  They  have  imaginative  power  of  no  in 
ferior  type  and  an  ardor  that  is  contagious.  It  was  worth 
while  to  have  written  them:  they  picture  for  all  time  a  unique 
phase  of  American  life,  but  it  is  no  great  loss  to  our  literature 
that  the  two  were  not  expanded  into  a  long  series.  In  the 
higher  sense  of  the  word  they  are  not  literature;  they  are  re 
markably  well  done  newspaper  "stories."  Like  most  of  the 
work  of  his  group  of  writers,  they  are  journalistic  in  pitch  and 
in  intent:  stirring  narratives,  picturesque  presentings  of  un 
usual  material,  timely  studies  in  dynamic  style.  But  literary 
art  is  founded  upon  restraint,  reserve,  poise.  These  stories 
lack  finish,  concentration,  and  even,  at  times,  good  taste. 
Everywhere  full  organ,  everywhere  tenseness,  everywhere  ex 
citement.  A  terrible  directness  there  is,  but  it  tends  no  whither 
and  it  comes  to  no  terminus  of  conclusion. 

Xorris  unquestionably  lacked  knowledge  of  many  of  the  most 
fundamental  areas  of  human  life.  He  was  too  insistently  mod 
ern.  Like  the  mere  journalist,  he  was  obsessed  with  but  a  single 
thought:  the  value  of  the  present  moment.  He  lacked  a  sense 
of  the  past,  personal  background,  inner  life,  power  to  weigh 
and  balance  and  compare,  and,  lacking  these,  he  lacked  the  ele 
ments  that  make  for  the  literature  of  permanence. 

Henry  Harland's  (1861-1905)  earliest  work,  As  It  Was  Writ 
ten  (1885),  Mrs.  Peixada,  and  The  Yoke  of  the  Thora  (1887). 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  401 

written  under  the  pen  name  "Sidney  Luska,"  presented  cer 
tain  phases  of  Jewish  life  and  character  in  New  York  with  a 
grim  power  that  seemed  promising,  but  his  later  work  was 
decadent.  Harold  Frederic  was  a  more  substantial  figure.  A 
typical  American,  self-made  and  self-educated,  climbing  by 
rapid  stages  from  the  positions  of  farm  hand,  photographer,  and 
proof-reader  to  the  editorship  of  influential  papers  like  the  Al 
bany  Journal,  at  twenty-eight  he  was  the  European  representa 
tive  of  the  New  York  Times  and  an  international  correspondent 
of  rare  power.  Novel-writing  he  took  up  as  a  recreation.  His 
earliest  work,  which  appeared  in  Scribner's  Magazine,  Seth's 
Brother's  Wife  (1887),  was  a  novel  of  New  York  farm  life, 
Garland-like  in  its  depressing  realism.  Later  stories  like  In  the 
Valley  and  The  Copperhead  dealt  with  a  background  of  the 
Civil  War.  His  greatest  success  came  with  The  Damnation  of 
Theron  Ware,  published  in  England  with  the  title  Illumination, 
a  remarkable  book  especially  in  its  earlier  chapters,  full  of  vigor 
and  truth.  Undoubtedly  he  possessed  the  rare  gift  of  story 
telling,  and  had  he,  like  Crawford,  devoted  himself  wholly  to 
the  art,  he  might  have  done  work  to  compare  with  any  other 
written  during  the  period.  But  he  was  a  journalist  with  news 
paper  standards,  he  worked  in  haste,  he  lacked  repose  and  the 
sense  of  values,  and  as  a  result  a  republication  of  his  novels 
has  not  been  called  for.  He  is  to  be  ranked  with  Crane  and 
Norris  as  a  meteor  of  brilliance  rather  than  a  fixed  light. 

VI 

The  new  realism  was  short  lived.  Even  while  its  propa 
ganda  like  Crumbling  Idols  and  The  Responsibilities  of  the 
Novelist  were  spreading  the  news  that  Walter  Scott  was  dead 
and  that  the  god  of  things  as  they  are  had  come  in  his  power, 
a  new  romantic  period  already  had  begun.  Maurice  Thomp 
son,  one  of  the  most  clear-eyed  critics  of  the  period,  wrote  in 
May,  1900: 

Just  how  deep  and  powerful  the  present  distinct  movement  toward 
a  romantic  revival  may  be  no  one  can  tell.  Many  facts,  however,  point 
to  a  veering  of  popular  interest  from  the  fiction  of  character  analysis 
and  social  problems  to  the  historical  novel  and  the  romance  of  heroic 
adventure.  We  have  had  a  period  of  intense,  not  to  say  morbid,  in 
troversion  directed  mainly  upon  diseases  of  the  social,  domestic,  po- 


402  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

litical,  and  religious  life  of  the  world.  It  may  be  that,  like  all  other 
currents  of  interest  when  turned  upon  insoluble  problems,  this  rush 
of  inquiry,  this  strain  of  exploitation,  has  about  run  its  course.  .  .  . 
Great  commercial  interest  seems  to  be  turned  or  turning  from  the 
world  of. commonplace  life  and  the  story  of  the  analysis  of  crime  and 
tilth  to  the  historical  romance,  the  story  of  heroism,  and  the  tale  of 
adventure.  People  seem  to  be  interested  as  never  before  in  the  inter 
pretation  of  history.  It  may  be  that  signs  in  the  air  of  great  world 
changes  have  set  all  minds  more  or  less  to  feeling  out  for  precedents 
and  examples  by  which  to  measure  the  future's  probabilities.6 

The  causes  of  this  later  wave  of  romanticism,  a  wave  that  was 
wider  than  America,  have  been  variously  estimated.  Harold 
Frederic  suggested  Blackmore  as  the  possible  fountain  head. 
"Was  it  Lorna  Doone,  I  wonder,  that  changed  the  drift  in  his 
torical  fiction  ?  The  book,  after  it  was  once  introduced  to  public 
attention  by  that  comic  accident  which  no  one  can  blame  Mr. 
Blackmore  for  grinding  his  teeth  over,  achieved,  as  it  deserved, 
one  of  the  great  successes  of  our  time — and  great  successes  set 
men  thinking. ' ' 7  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  himself  an  historian 
and  a  notable  producer  of  historical  romance,  was  inclined  to 
another  explanation:  "At  the  present  moment  [1897]  there 
seems  a  revival  of  interest  in  American  history,  and  the  novelist 
has  been  quickly  responsive  to  it."8  The  English  critic  E.  A. 
Bennett  offered  still  another  solution:  "America  is  a  land  of 
crazes.  In  other  words,  it  is  simple:  no  derision  is  im 
plied.  .  .  .  And  America  is  also  a  land  of  sentimentalism.  It 
is  this  deep-seated  quality  which,  perhaps,  accounts  for  the 
vogue  of  history  in  American  fiction.  The  themes  of  the  his 
torical  novel  are  so  remote,  ideas  about  them  exist  so  nebulously 
in  the  mind,  that  a  writer  may  safely  use  the  most  bare-faced 
distortions  to  pamper  the  fancy  without  offending  that  natural 
and  racial  shrewdness  which  would  bestir  itself  if  a  means  of 
verification  were  at  hand.  The  extraordinary  notion  still  ob 
tains  that  human  nature  was  different  'in  those  days';  that  the 
good  old  times  were,  somehow,  'pretty,'  and  governed  by  fates 
poetically  just."  ° 

Ford  undoubtedly  was  right  in  assigning  the  immediate  out 
burst  at  the  close  of  the  century  to  a  new  interest  in  American 

«The  Independent,  52:1182. 

7  The  Bookman,  8:330. 

*Thr  .\tlnntir.  S(»:7:iO. 

•  E.  A.  Bennett,  Fame  and  Fiction,  page  163. 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  403 

history.  The  war  with  Spain  brought  about  a  burst  of 
patriotism  and  of  martial  feeling  that  made  the  swashbuckling 
romance  and  the  episode  from  the  American  Revolution  seem 
peculiarly  appropriate.  But  the  war  was  by  no  means  the  only 
cause.  The  reaction  had  come  earlier,  a  reaction  from  the  ex 
cess  of  reality  that  had  come  with  the  eighties.  The  influence 
of  Stevenson  must  not  be  overlooked,  Stevenson  who,  type  of 
his  age,  had  sickened  early  of  the  realistic,  the  analytic,  the 
problematic. 

"I  do  desii^e  a  book  of  adventure,"  Stevenson  had  written  to  Henley 
as  early  as  1884,  "a  romance — and  no  man  will  get  or  write  me  one. 
Dumas  I  have  read  and  re-read  too  often;  Scott,  too,  and  I  am  short. 
I  want  to  hear  swords  clash.  1  want  a  book  to  begin  in  a  good  way; 
a  book,  I  guess,  like  Treasure  Island.  .  .  .  Oh,  my  sighings  after  ro 
mance,  or  even  Skeltery,  and  0 !  the  weary  age  which  will  produce  ine 
neither ! 

"  'CHAPTER  I 

"  'The  night  was  damp  and  cloudy,  the  ways  foul.  The  single  horse 
man,  cloaked  and  booted,  who  pursued  his  way  across  Willesden  Com 
mon,  had  not  met  a  traveler,  when  the  sound  of  wheels.  .  .  .' 

"  CHAPTER  II 

" '  "Yes,  sir,"  said  the  old  pilot,  "she  must  have  dropped  into  the  bay 
a  little  afore  dawn.  A  queer  craft  she  looks." 

" '  "She  shows  no  colors,"  returned  the  young  gentleman,  musingly. 

" '  "They're  a-lowering  of  a  quarter-boat,  Mr.  Mark,"  resumed  the 
old  salt.  "We  shall  soon  know  more  of  her." 

" '  "Aye,"  replied  the  young  gentleman  called  Mark,  "and  here,  Mr, 
Seadrift,  comes  your  sweet  daughter  Nancy  tripping  down  the  cliff." 

"  '  "God  bless  her  kind  heart,  sir,"  ejaculated  old  Seadrift.7  " 

Be  the  cause  what  it  may,  for  a  time  historical  romance  was 
the  dominant  literary  form  in  America.  In  1902,  Bliss  Perry, 
editor  of  the  Atlantic,  could  write  of  "the  present  passion  for 
historical  novels."  To  what  extent  they  were  a  passion  may 
be  learned  from  the  records  of  publishers.  By  the  summer  of 
1901,  Ford's  Janice  Meredith  had  sold  275,000  copies,  Mary 
Johnston's  To  Have  and  to  Hold,  285,000,  and  Churchill's  The 
Crisis,  320,000,  and  his  Richard  Carvel,  420,000. 10  One  might 
give  equally  large  figures  for  such  favorites  as  Charles  Major's 
When  Knighthood  Was  in  Flower,  Tarkington's  Monsieur 
Beaucaire,  Mitchell's  Hugh  Wynne,  Free  Quaker,  Thompson's 

loHalsey,  Our  Literary  Deluge,  page  24. 


404  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Alice  of  Old  Vincenncs,  and  very  many  others,  foreign  as  well 
jis  American. 

The  novels  fall  into  two  classes:  those  in  which  the  historical 
element  is  made  emphatic  and  those  which  are  pure  romances. 
Of  the  former  class  Paul  Leicester  Ford's  Janice  Meredith  is, 
perhaps,  the  best  type;  of  the  latter,  Mitchell's  Huyh  \Vynn<. 
Ford  was  first  of  all  a  historian,  a  bibliographer,  a  tireless  delver 
among  historical  sources.  He  had  been  educated  in  his  father's 
library,  which  contained  the  finest  collection  of  Americana  in 
the  world,  and  at  twelve  we  find  him  publishing  on  his  own 
press  a  genealogy  of  Webster  of  his  own  compilation.  His  later 
bibliographical  and  historical  work  centered  about  the  Ameri 
can  Revolution.  When  he  turned  to  fiction  it  was  as  a  his 
torian,  a  specialist  who  would  exploit  real  historical  characters 
and  real  areas  of  American  life.  The  Honorable  Peter  Stirling 
was  a  study  of  ward  politics  with  the  young  Grover  Cleveland 
as  the  central  figure.  It  was  an  accurate  picture,  vigorous  and 
truthful,  and  even  though  a  fiction  it  is  a  valuable  historical 
document.  So  it  was  with  Janice  Meredith,  a  historian's  day 
dream  over  his  Americana.  It  presents  an  accurate  picture  of 
the  social  conditions  of  its  time.  Many  of  its  characters  are 
revolutionary  leaders:  Washington  is  a  central  figure — "The 
true  George  Washington,"  presented  with  all  his  failings  as 
well  as  with  all  his  excellences. 

It  was  natural  that  Ford  should  make  much  of  the  material 
that  he  knew  so  thoroughly:  he  brought  it  in  sometimes  for  its 
own  sake  rather  than  for  the  sake  of  the  story.  Undoubtedly 
he  falsified  history  by  making  his  real  personages,  like  Wash 
ington  and  Franklin,  take  part  in  conversations  that  never  oc 
curred  and  do  things  that  strictly  never  were  done,  but  it  is 
equally  true  that  he  has  given  us  the  best  conception  that  is 
now  possible  of  how  it  must  have  felt  to  live  in  the  days  of  the 
Revolution.  His  chief  excellences  were  his  vigor  and  vivacity, 
and  his  Norris-like  mastery  of  details.  He  was  a  realist  en 
amoured  of  truth  who  extended  his  realism  into  the  domain  of 
romance.  His  faults  all  centered  about  his  undoubted  de 
ficiency  in  literary  art:  he  lacked  constructive  power  and  dis 
tinction  of  style.  His  stories  are  the  diversions  of  a  professional 
historian,  brilliant  but  without  promise  of  permanence. 

Typical  of  the  second  variety  of  historical  romance  is  the  work 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  405 

of  Silas  Weir  Mitchell,  poet,  romancer,  artist,  and  historian. 
Dr.  Mitchell  was  of  Philadelphia  as  Dr.  Holmes  was  of  Boston, 
and  like  Dr.  Holmes  he  gave  his  most  vigorous  years  completely 
to  his  profession.  He  was  fifty-three  and  one  of  the  leading 
world  specialists  on  nervous  diseases  when  he  wrote  his  first 
full  novel,  In  War  Time.  His  own  explanation,  given  in  later- 
years  to  a  gathering  of  University  of  Pennsylvania  men,  has 
often  been  quoted: 

When  success  in  my  profession  gave  me  the  freedom  of  long  summer 
holidays,  the  despotism  of  my  habits  of  work  would  have  made  entire 
idleness  mere  ennui.  I  turned  to  what,  except  for  stern  need,  would 
have  been  my  lifelong  work  from  youth — literature — bored  by  idleness, 
wrote  my  first  novel. 

The  confession  in  the  latter  sentence  is  significant.  Poetry 
all  his  life  was  to  him  an  exalted  thing,  as  it  was,  indeed,  to 
Stoddard  and  the  other  poets  of  beauty.  In  later  years  he  pub 
lished  many  volumes  of  it  and  contributed  it  to  the  magazines, 
but  never  for  money.  It  explains  much  in  his  work.  No  other 
novelist  of  the  period  has  so  filled  his  fiction  with  quoted  lyrics 
and  with  lyrical  prose.  It  is  here  that  he  differs  from  writers 
like  Ford  and  Norris:  he  would  produce  literature. 

His  list  of  work  is  a  varied  one.  His  first  long  novel  and 
also  his  last  dealt  with  the  Civil  War,  in  which  he  had  served 
three  years  as  a  surgeon.  Then,  like  Dr.  Holmes,  he  wrote 
pathological  studies  on  which  he  brought  to  bear  his  vast  medi 
cal  knowledge,  novels  like  Dr.  North  and  His  Friends  and  Con 
stance  Trescott;  he  wrote  brilliant  tales  of  French  life,  like  The 
Adventures  of  Francois,  Dr.  Mitchell's  favorite  among  his 
novels,  and  A  Diplomatic  Adventure;  he  wrote  idyllic  studies 
of  Nature  like  When  All  the  Woods  Are  Green,  and  Far  in  the 
Forest,  and,  best  of  all,  the  historical  romances  Hugh  Wynne, 
Free  Quaker,  and  The  Red  City. 

These  novels  more  than  any  others  written  during  the  period 
are  products  of  an  exact  and  extensive  knowledge  of  the  ma 
terials  of  which  they  are  woven.  We  feel  at  every  point  that 
we  are  in  the  hands  of  an  expert,  the  ablest  neurologist  of  his 
generation,  who  has  seen  intimately  vast  areas  of  life  of  which 
the  average  reader  knows  nothing.  His  analysis  of  a  character 
has  the  exactness  of  a  clinic  and  he  adds  to  it,  moreover,  an 


406  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

imaginative  power  that  makes  us  see  as  well  as  know  and  feel. 
Hi-  is  skilful  in  characterization.  " Character,"  he  once  wrote, 
"is  best  delineated  by  occasional  broad  touches,  without  much 
explanatory  comment,  without  excess  of  minute  description.  If 
I  fail  to  characterize,  I  fail  in  novel  writing."  lie  has  not 
tailed.  Octavia  Blake  in  the  novel  Roland  Blake  is  drawn  with 
peculiar  skill ;  so  is  Lucretia  Hunter  in  Circumstance,  so  is  Con 
stance  Trescott,  that  study  of  over-devotion.  Always  is  he  best 
in  his  studies  of  femininity,  doubtless  because  women  had  played 
so  large  a  part  in  his  medical  practice. 

With  few  exceptions  his  characters  are  from  the  higher 
classes,  "gentlefolk,"  he  has  called  them  in  his  novel  Dr.  North, 
and  he  has  made  them  alive,  as  Howells  was  unable  to  do,  and 
even  James.  He  has  discussed  the  point  himself:  "Nor  can  I 
tell  why  some  men  can  not  create  gentlefolk.  It  is  not  knowl 
edge,  nor  is  it  the  being  in  or  of  their  world  that  gives  this 
power.  Thackeray  had  it ;  so  had  Trollope ;  Dickens  never ;  nor, 
in  my  mind,  was  George  Eliot  always  happy  in  this  respect; 
and  of  the  living  I  shall  say  nothing."11  We  feel  this  quality 
most  strongly  in  his  historical  novels.  He  knew  intimately  his 
background,  Old  Philadelphia  with  its  exclusive  aristocracy, 
and  he  has  been  able  to  transport  his  reader  into  the  very  atmos 
phere  of  old  Second  Street,  in  the  days  when  it  contained  the 
most  distinctive  social  set  in  America.  He  was  a  part  of  it; 
he  wrote  as  if  he  were  writing  his  own  family  history,  lovingly, 
reverently.  He  was  writing  romance,  but  he  was  writing  it  as 
one  who  is  on  sacred  historical  ground  where  error  of  fact  or  of 
inference  is  unpardonable.  He  has  himself  outlined  the  work 
of  the  historical  romancer: 

Suppose  I  have  a  story  to  tell  and  wish  to  evolve  character  amid 
the  scenery  and  events  of  an  historical  episode.  Suppose,  for  in 
stance,  the  story  to  lie  largely  in  a  great  city.  For  years  I  must  study 
the  topography,  dress,  manners,  and  family  histories;  must  be  able  in 
mind  to  visit  this  or  that  house;  know  where  to  call,  whom  I  shall  see, 
the  hours  of  meals,  the  diet,  pames,  etc.  I  must  know  what  people 
say  on  meeting  and  parting.  Then  I  must  read  letters,  diaries,  and  so 
on,  to  get  the  speech  forms  and  to  enable  me,  if  it  be  autobiography, 
to  command  the  written  style  of  the  day.  Most  men  who  write  thus 
of  another  time  try  to  give  the  effect  of  actuality  by  an  excessive  use 
of  archaic  forms.  Only  enough  should  be  used  to  keep  from  time 
to  time  some  touch  of  this  past,  and  not  so  much  as  to  distract  inces- 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  407 

santly  by  needless  reminders.     It  is  an  art,  and,  like  all  good  art  ef 
fects,  it  escapes  complete  analysis. 

Then  as  to  the  use  of  historical  characters.  These  must  naturally 
influence  the  fate  of  your  puppets;  they  must  never  be  themselves  the 
most  prominent  personages  of  your  story.11 

He  presents  his  material  with  skill:  he  is  a  story-teller;  his 
plots  move  strongly  and  always  by  means  not  of  explanations 
but  of  the  self-development  of  his  characters.  Even  his  most 
minor  figures  form  a  distinct  part  of  the  movement.  His  style 
has  more  of  distinction  than  has  any  other  of  the  later  ro 
mancers.  He  brought  to  his  work  the  older  ideals  of  literary 
form  and  expression,  and  he  wrought  not  with  the  haste  of  the 
journalist  and  special  correspondent,  but  with  the  leisure  of 
the  deliberate  man  of  letters.  Without  question  he  is  as  large 
a  figure  in  his  period  as  Dr.  Holmes  was  in  his,  and  there  are 
those  who  would  rank  him  as  the  greater  of  the  two.  That  he 
has  not  been  given  a  more  commanding  place  is  due  undoubtedly 
to  his  great  fame  as  a  medical  expert.  The  physician  has  over 
shadowed  the  author. 

VII 

The  enormous  quantity  and  richness  of  the  fiction  of  the 
period  make  impossible  extended  criticism  of  any  save  those 
who  were  leaders  or  innovators.  Many  did  most  excellent  work, 
work  indeed  in  some  cases  that  seems  to  point  to  permanence, 
yet  since  they  brought  nothing  new  either  in  material  or  in 
method  we  need  not  dwell  long  upon  them. 

No  type  of  fiction,  for  instance,  was  more  abundant  all 
through  the  period  than  that  which  we  have  called  the  E.  P. 
Roe  type,  and  the  most  voluminous  producer  of  it  undoubtedly 
was  Captain,  later  General,  Charles  King,  who  created  no  fewer 
than  fifty-five  novels  of  the  half-sensational,  half-sentimental 
type  which  we  associate  with  the  name  of  Roe.  With  his  wide 
knowledge  of  army  life,  especially  as  lived  in  the  frontier  camps 
of  the  West  after  the  Civil  War,  he  was  able  to  give  his  work 
a  verisimilitude  that  added  greatly  to  their  popularity.  The 
love  story  was  skilfully  blended  with  what  seemed  to  be  real 
history.  The  frontier  stories  of  Mary  Hallock  Foote,  wife  of 
a  civil  engineer  whose  work  called  him  into  the  mining  camps 

n  Dr.  North  and  His  Friends.     Chapter  16. 


408  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

of  Colorado  and  Idaho,  have  the  same  characteristics.  Their 
author,  a  clever  illustrator,  was  able  to  extend  her  art  to  her 
descriptions  of  the  primitive  regions  and  savage  humanity  of 
the  frontier,  and  for  a  time  she  was  compared  even  with  Bret 
Harte.  But  not  for  long.  Her  books,  save  for  their  novelty 
of  setting,  have  no  characteristics  that  are  not  conventional. 
Better  is  the  work  of  Clara  Louise  Burnham.  There  is  in  her 
fiction  more  of  imaginative  power  and  more  command  of  the 
subtleties  of  style,  but  even  her  best  efforts  fall  far  short  of 
distinction. 

Of  the  romancers  of  the  period  the  leader  for  a  time  un 
questionably  was  Julian  Hawthorne,  only  son  of  the  greatest  of 
American  romancers.  In  his  earlier  days  he  devoted  himself 
to  themes  worthy  of  the  Hawthorne  name  and  treated  them  in 
what  fairly  may  be  called  the  Hawthorne  manner.  His  novels, 
like  Brcssant  and  Archibald  Malmaison,  were  hailed  everywhere 
as  remarkably  promising  work  and  there  were  many  who  pre 
dicted  for  him  a  place  second  only  to  his  father's.  But  the  man 
lacked  seriousness,  conscience,  depth  of  life,  knowledge  of  the 
human  heart.  After  a  short  period  of  worthy  endeavor  he 
turned  to  the  sensational  and  the  trivial,  and  became  a  yellow 
journalist.  No  literary  career  seemingly  so  promising  has  ever 
failed  more  dismally. 

Stronger  romancers  by  far  have  been  Blanche  Willis  Howard, 
Frederick  J.  Stimson,  and  Arthur  Sherburne  Hardy.  Few 
American  women  have  been  more  brilliant  than  Miss  Howard. 
Her  One  Summer  has  a  sprightliness  and  a  humor  about  it  that 
are  perennial,  and  her  Breton  romance  G-uenn  is  among  the 
greatest  romances  of  the  period  in  either  England  or  America. 
The  spirit  of  true  romance  breathes  from  it;  and  it  came  alive 
from  its  creator's  heart  and  life.  So  far  does  it  surpass  all  her 
other  work  that  she  is  rated  more  and  more  now  as  a  single- 
work  artist.  She  passed  her  last  years  away  from  America  in 
Stuttgart,  where  her  husband,  Herr  von  Teuffel,  was  acting  as 
court  physician  to  the  king  of  Wiirtemberg.  Hardy  also  was  a 
romancer,  a  stylist  of  the  French  type,  brilliant,  finished.  Few 
have  ever  brought  to  fiction  a  mind  more  keenly  alert  and  more 
analytical.  He  was  a  mathematician  of  note,  a  writer  of 
treatises  on  least  squares  and  quarternions.  But  he  was  a  poet 
as  well  and  a  romancer.  His  But  yet  a  Woman  has  an  atmos- 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  409 

phere  about  it  that  is  rarely  found  in  literature  in  English. 
His  Passe  Rose  is  the  most  idealistic  of  all  the  historical  ro 
mances:  it  moves  like  a  prose  poem.  Stimson  too  had  artistic 
imagination,  grace  of  style  of  the  old  type  joined  to  the  fresh 
ness  and  vigor  of  the  new  period.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  he 
chose  to  devote  himself  to  the  law  and  write  legal  treatises  that 
are  everywhere  recognized  as  authoritative  rather  than  to  do 
highly  distinctive  work  in  the  more  creative  field  of  prose 
romance.  None  of  these  writers  may  be  said  to  have  added 
anything  really  new  to  the  province  in  which  they  worked  and 
so  may  be  dismissed  with  a  brief  comment.  They  worked  in  old 
material  with  old  methods  and  largely  with  old  ideals,  and 
though  they  worked  often  with  surpassing  skill,  they  were  fol 
lowers  rather  than  leaders. 

Several  novels  made  much  stir  in  the  day  of  their  first  ap 
pearance,  Bellamy's  Looking  Backward,  for  instance,  John 
Hay's  The  Bread-Winners  (1884),  and  Fuller's  The  Cliff 
Dwellers,  that  picture  of  Chicago  life  that  for  a  time  was  thought 
to  be  as  promising  as  Frank  Norris's  realistic  work.  Robert 
Grant's  humorous  and  sprightly  studies  of  society  and  life  were 
also  at  various  times  much  discussed,  but  all  of  them  are  seen 
now  to  have  been  written  for  their  own  generation  alone.  With 
every  decade  almost  there  comes  a  newness  that  for  a  time  is 
supposed  to  put  into  eclipse  even  the  fixed  stars.  A  quarter  of 
a  century,  however,  tells  the  story.  The  Norwegian  scholar  and 
poet  and  novelist  Boyesen,  who  did  what  Howells  really  did 
not  do,  take  Tolstoy  as  his  master,  was  thought  for  two  decades 
to  be  of  highest  rank,  but  to-day  his  work,  save  for  certain  sec 
tions  of  his  critical  studies,  is  no  longer  read. 

Even  F.  Hopkinson  Smith  is  too  near  just  at  present  for  us 
to  prophesy  with  confidence,  yet  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  his 
Colonel  Carter  is  to  be  forgotten,  and  there  are  other  parts 
of  his  work,  like  Tom  Grogan  and  Caleb  West,  books  that  cen 
tered  about  his  profession  of  lighthouse  architect,  that  seem 
now  like  permanent  additions  to  American  fiction.  There  was  a 
breeziness  about  his  style,  a  cosmopolitanism,  a  sense  of  knowl 
edge  and  authority  that  is  most  convincing.  Some  of  his  short 
stories,  like  those  for  instance  in  At  Close  Range — "A  Night 
Out,"  to  be  still  more  specific — have  a  picturing  power,  a  per- 
naturalness,  an  accuracy  of  diction,  that  mark  them  as 


410  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

triumphs  of  realism  in  its  best  sense.  Like  Dr.  Mitchell,  he  came 
late  to  literature,  but  when  he  did  come  he  came  strongly,  laden 
with  a  wealth  of  materials,  and  he  has  left  behind  him  a  hand 
ful  at  least  of  novels  and  studies  that  bid  fair  to  endure  long. 

VIII 

Of  the  younger  group  of  novelists,  those  writers  born  in  the 
sixties  and  early  seventies  and  publishing  their  h'rst  novels  dur 
ing  the  first  decade  of  the  new  century,  we  shall  say  little.  The 
new  spirit  of  nationality  that  came  in  the  seventies  did  not  fur 
nish  the  impulse  that  produced  the  work  of  this  second  genera 
tion  of  the  period.  It  is  a  school  of  novelists  distinct  and  by 
itself.  We  may  only  call  the  roll  of  its  leaders,  arranging  it, 
perhaps,  in  the  order  of  seniority:  Gertrude  Franklin  Ather- 

ton     (1859 ),     Bliss     Perry     (1860 ),     Owen     \Vister 

(1860 ),    John    Fox,    Jr.     (1863 ),    Holman    F.    Day 

(1865 ),     Robert     W.     Chambers     (1865 ),     Meredith 

Nicholson    (1866 ),    David    Graham    Philips    (1867-1911), 

Robert     Herrick      (1868 ),     Newton     Booth     Tarkington 

(1869 ),  Mary  Johnston  (1870 ),  Edith  Wharton  ( ), 

Alice  Hegan  Rice   (1870 ),  Winston  Churchill   (1871 ), 

Stewart  Edward  White   (1873 ),  Ellen  Anderson  Glasgow 

(1874 ),  Jack  London   (1876-1916).     The  earlier  work  of 

some  of  these  writers  falls  under  classifications  which  we  have 
already  discussed,  as  for  instance  Churchill's  Richard  Carvel, 
Mary  Johnston's  Prisoners  of  Hope,  Chambers 's  Cardigan,  and 
Wister's  The  Virginian.  Of  the  great  mass  of  the  fiction  of  the 
group,  however,  and  of  a  still  younger  group  we  shall  say  noth 
ing.  It  was  not  inspired  by  the  impulse  that  in  the  sixties  and 
the  seventies  produced  the  National  Period. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

JOSIAH  GILBERT  HOLLAND.  (1819-1881.)  History  of  Western  Massa 
chusetts,  1855;  The  Bay  Path,  1857;  Bitter-Sweet  [a  poem],  1858;  Let 
ters  to  Young  People,  1858;  Gold  Foil,  1859;  Miss  Gilbert's  Career,  1860; 
Lessons  in  Life,  18G1;  Letter  to  the  Joneses,  1863;  Plain  Talks  on  Familiar 
Subjects,  1865;  Life  of  Lincoln,  1865;  Kathrina  [a  poem],  1867;  The 
Marble  Prophecy,  1872;  Arthur  Bonnicastlc,  1873;  Garnered  Sheaves,  1873; 
Mistress  of  the  Manse,  1874;  Seven  Oaks,  1875;  Nicholas  Minturn,  1877; 
Kvery-Day  Topics  (two  series),  1870,  1882. 

Kit  WARD    PAYSON    ROE.     (1838-1888.)     Barriers    Burned    Away,    1872; 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  411 

What  Can  She  Dof  1873;  The  Opening  of  a  Chestnut  Burr,  1874;  From 
Jest  to  Earnest,  1875;  Near  to  Nature's  Heart,  1876;  A  Knight  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  1877;  A  Face  Illumined,  1878;  A  Day  of  Fate,  1880; 
Without  a  Home,  1881;  His  Somber  Rivals,  1883;  An  Unexpected  Result, 
1883;  Nature's  Serial  Story,  1884;  A  Young  Girl's  Wooing,  1884;  Driven 
Back  to  Eden,  1885;  An  Original  Belle,  1885;  He  Fell  in  Love  with  His 
Wife,  1886;  The  Earth  Trembled,  1887;  Found,  yet  Lost,  1888;  Miss  Lou, 
1888;  E.  P.  Roe:  Reminiscences  of  His  Life.  By  his  sister,  Mary  A.  Roe, 
1899. 

FRANCES  ELIZA  HODGSON  BURNETT.  (1849 .)  That  Lass  o'  Low- 

rie's,  1877;  Surly  Tim,  1877;  Haworth's,  1879;  Louisiana,  1880;  A  Fair 
Barbarian,  1881;  Through  One  Administration,  1883;  Little  Lord  Fauntle- 
roy,  1886;  Editha's  Burglar,  1888;  Sara  Crewe,  1888;  The  Pretty  Sister 
of  Jose,  1889;  Little  Saint  Elizabeth,  1890;  Giovanni  and  the  Other,  1892; 
The  One  I  Knew  Best  of  All  [autobiography],  1893;  Two  Little  Pilgrims' 
Progress,  1895;  A  Lady  of  Quality,  1896;  His  Grace  of  Osmonde,  1897; 
In  Connection  with  the  De-Willoughby  Claim,  1899 ;  The  Making 
of  a  Marchioness,  1901;  The  Methods  of  Lady  Walderhurst,  1902; 
In  the  Closed  Room,  1904;  A  Little  Princess:  Being  the  Whole 
Story  of  Sara  Crewe,  1905;  Dawn  of  a  To-morroic,  1906;  Earlier 
Stories,  first  and  second  series,  1906;  Queen  Silver-Bell,  1906;  Racketty- 
Packetty  House,  1906;  The  Shuttle,  1907;  Cozy  Lion,  1907;  Good  Wolf, 
1908;  Spring  Cleaning;  as  Told  by  Queen  Crosspatch,  1908;  Land  of  the 
Blue  Flower,  1909;  Baby  Crusoe  and  His  Man  Saturday,  1909;  Secret 
Garden,  1911;  My  Robin,  1912;  T.  Tembaron,  1913. 

FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD.  (1854-1909.)  Mr.  Isaacs,  1882;  Doctor 
Claudius,  1883;  A  Roman  Singer,  To  Leeward,  and  An  American  Politi 
cian,  1884;  Zoroaster,  1885;  A  Tale  of  a  Lonely  Parish,  1886;  Marzio's 
Crucifix,  Paul  Patoff,  and  Saracinesca,  1887;  With  the  Immortals,  1888; 
Greifenstein  and  Sant'  Ilario,  1889;  The  Cigarette-maker's  Romance,  1890; 
KahJed  and  The  Witch  of  Prague,  1891;  The  Three  Fates,  The  Children 
of  the  King,  and  Don  Orsino,  1892;  Marion  Darche,  Pietro  Ghisleri,  and 
The  Novel:  What  It  Is,  1893;  Katherine  Lauderdale,  Love  in  Idleness,  The 
Ralstons,  Casa  Braccio,  and  Adam  Johnstone's  Son,  1894;  Taquisara,  and 
Corleone,  1896;  Ave  Roma  Immortalis,  1898;  Via  Crucis,  1899;  In  the 
Palace  of  the  King,  Southern  Italy  and  Sicily,  and  The  Rulers  of  the 
South,  1900;  Marietta,  a  Maid  of  Venice,  1901;  Cecilia,  A  Story  of  Modern 
Rome,  1902;  The  Heart  of  Rome,  and  Man  Overboard,  1903;  Whosoever 
Shall  Offend,  1904;  Fair  Margaret  and  Salve  Venetia,  1905;  A  Lady  of 
Rome,  1906;  Arethusa  and  The  Little  City  of  Hope,  1907;  The  Primadonna 
and  The  Diva's  Ruby,  1908;  The  White  Sister,  1909. 

MARGARETTA  WADE  DELANO.  (1857 .)  The  Old  Garden  and  Other 

Verses,  1886;  John  Ward,  Preacher,  1888;  Florida  Days,  1889;  Sidney, 
1890;  Story  of  a  Child,  1892;  Mr.  Tommy  Dove,  and  Other  Stories,  1893; 
Philip  and  His  Wife,  1894;  The  Wisdom  of  Fools,  1897;  Old  Chester  Tales, 
1898;  Dr.  Lavendar's  People,  1903;  The  Common  Way,  1904;  The  Awaken 
ing  of  Helena  Ritchie,  1906;  An  Encore,  1907;  R.  J.  Mother  and  Some  Other 
People,  1908;  Where  the  Laborers  Are  Few,  1909;  The  Way  of  Peace,  1910; 


412  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  Iron  Woman,  1911;  The  Voice,  1912;  Partners,  1913;  The  Hands  of 
Esau,  1914. 

SMTHEN  CRANE.  (1871-1900.)  The  Black  Riders  and  Other  Lines, 
1895;  The  Red  Badge  of  Courage:  Episode  of  the  American  Ciiil  War, 
1895;  Maggie:  a  Girl  of  the  Streets,  1896;  George's  Mother,  1896;  The 
Little  Regiment,  and  Other  Episodes  of  the  American  Civil  War,  1896; 
The  Third  Violet,  1897;  The  Open  Boat,  and  Other  Tales  of  Adventure, 
1898;  The  Monster  and  Other  Stories,  1899;  Active  Service:  a  Novel,  1899; 
\\ar  Is  Kind,  1899;  Whilomville  Stories,  1900;  Great  Battles  of  the 
World,  1900;  Wounds  in  the  Rain:  War  Stories,  1900. 

FRANK  NORRIS.  (1870-1902.)  Moran  of  "The  Lady  Letty,"  1898;  Blix, 
1899;  McTeague:  a  Story  of  San  Francisco,  1899;  A  Man's  Woman,  1900; 
The  Octopus:  a  Story  of  California,  1901;  The  Pit:  a  Story  of  Chicago, 
1902;  A  Deal  in  Wheat,  and  Other  Stories,  1903;  Complete  Works.  Golden 
Gate  Edition.  Seven  Volumes,  1903;  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist  and 
Other  Literary  Essays,  1903;  Vandover  and  the  Brute. 

HAROLD  FREDERIC.  (1856-1898.))  Seth's  Brother's  Wife:  a  Study  of 
"Life  in  the  Greater  Neio  York,  1887;  The  Lawton  Girl,  1890;  In  the  Val 
ley,  1891;  Young  Emperor  William  II.  of  Germany,  1891;  The  New  Exo 
dus:  a  Study  of  Israel  in  Russia,  1892;  The  Return  of  O'Mahony,  1S92-, 
The  Copperhead,  1893;  Marsena,  and  Other  Stories  of  the  War  Time,  1394 > 
Mrs.  Albert  Grundy:  Observations  in  Philistia,  1896;  The  Damnation  of 
Theron  Ware,  1896;  March  Hares,  1896;  The  Deserter  and  Other  Stories: 
a  Book  of  Two  Wars,  1898;  Gloria  Mundi,  1899;  The  Market-Place,  IS!)'.). 

PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD.  (1865-1902.)  Who  Was  the  Mother  of  Frank 
lin's  Sonf  1889;  The  Honorable  Peter  Stirling  and  What  People  Thought 
of  Him,  1894;  The  True  George  Washington,  1896;  The  Great  K.  and  A. 
Robbery,  1897;  The  Story  of  an  Untold  Love,  1897;  Tattle  Tales  of  Cupid, 
1898;  Janice  Meredith:  a  Story  of  the  American  Revolution,  1899;  The. 
Many-sided  Franklin,  1899;  Wanted:  a  Match-maker,  1900;  A  House 
Party,  1901;  Wanted:  a  Chaperon,  1902;  A  Checked  Love  Affair;  and  the 
Cortelyou  Feud,  1903;  Love  Finds  a  Way,  1904;  Thomas  Jefferson,  1904. 
His  bibliographies  and  edited  work  not  listed. 

SILAS  WEIR  MITCHELL.  (1829-1914.)  Hephzibah  Guiness,  18SO;  Thee 
and  You,  1880;  A  Draft  on  the  Bank  of  Spain,  1880;  In  War  Time,  1882; 
The  Hill  of  Stones  and  Other  Poems,  1883;  Roland  Blake,  1886;  Far  in 
the  Forest,  1889;  The  Cup  of  Youth  and  Other  Poems,  1889;  The  Psalm  of 
Death  and  Other  Poems,  1890;  Characteristics,  1892;  Francis  Blake:  a 
Tragedy  of  the  Sea,  1892;  The  Mother  and  Other  Poems,  1892;  Mr.  Kri* 
Kringle:  a  Christmas  Tale,  1893;  Philip  Vernon:  a  Tale  in  Prose  and 
Verse,  1895;  When  All  the  Woods  Are  Green:  a  .Yore/,  1894;  Madeira's 
Party,  1895;  Hugh  Wynne,  Free  Quaker,  1897;  Adventures  of  Francois, 
Foundling,  Thief,  Jiigglrr,  ami  Fni''/i;i  Mnstrr,  During  the  French  Rew. 
lution,  1898;  Autobiography  of  a  Quack,  1900;  Dr.  North  and  His  Friend*, 
1900;  The  Wager  and  Other  Poems,  1900;  Circumstance,  1901;  A  Comedy 
of  Conscience,  1903;  Little  Stories,  1903;  flew  Samaria  and  The  Summer 
of  St.  Martin,  1904;  The  Youth  of  Washington,  1904;  Constance  Trescott, 
1905;  A  Diplomatic  Adventure,  1905;  The  Red  City:  a  Novel  of  the  Second 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  413 

Administration  of  President  Washington,  1907 ;  John  Sherwood,  Ironmas 
ter,  1910;  The  Guillotine  Club  and  Other  Stories,  1910;  Westways,  1913. 
His  many  medical  works  not  listed. 

CHARLES  KING.  ( 1844 . )  The  Colonel's  Daughter;  or,  Winning  His 

Spurs,  1883;  Marion's  Faith,  1886;  The  Deserter,  1887;  From  the  Ranks, 
1887;  A  War-Time  Wooing,  1888;  Between  the  Lines,  1889;  Sunset  Pass, 
1889;  Laramie;  or,  the  Queen  of  Bedlam:  a  Story  of  the  Sioux  War  of 
1816,  1889;  Starlight  Ranch,  and  Other  Stories  of  Army  Life  on  the  Fron 
tier,  1890;  The  Colonel's  Christmas  Dinner,  1890;  Campaigning  with  Crook 
and  Stories  of  Army  Life,  1890;  Trials  of  a  Staff  Officer,  1891;  Two  Sol 
diers,  1891;  Dunraven  Ranch,  1891;  Captain  Blake,  1891;  Foes  in  Ambush, 
1893;  A  Soldier's  Secret:  a  Story  of  the  Sioux  War  of  1890,  1893;  War- 
ing's  Peril,  1894;  Initial  Experience  and  Other  Stories,  1894;  Cadet  Days: 
a  Story  of  West  Point,  1894;  Under  Fire,  1895;  Story  of  Fort  Frayne, 
1895;  Rancho  del  Muerlo,  1895;  Captain  Close,  1895;  Sergeant  Croesus, 
1895;  An  Army  Wife,  1896;  A  Garrison  Tangle,  1896;  A  Tame  Surrender: 
a  Story  of  the  Chicago  Strike,  1896;  Trooper  Ross,  1896;  Trumpeter  Fred: 
a  Story  of  the  Plains,  1896;  Warrior  Gap:  a  Story  of  the  Sioux  Outbreak 
of  1868,  1897;  Ray's  Recruit,  1898;  The  General's  Double:  a  Story  of  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  1898;  A  Wounded  Name,  1898;  Trooper  Galahad, 
1899;  From  School  to  Battlefield,  1899;  In  Spite  of  Foes,  1901;  From  the 
Hanks,  1901;  Norman  Holt:  a  Story  of  the  Army  of  the  Cumberland,  1901; 
Ray's  Daughter:  a  Story  of  Manila,  1901;  Conquering  Corps  Badge  and 
Other  Stories  of  the  Philippines,  1902;  The  Iron  Brigade,  1902;  Way  Out 
West,  1902;  An  Apache  Princess,  1903;  A  Daughter  of  the  Sioux,  1903; 
Comrades  in  Arms,  1904;  A  Knight  of  Columbia,  1904;  A  Medal  of  Honor, 
1905;  Famous  and  Decisive  Battles  of  the  World,  1905;  A  Soldier's  Trial: 
an  Episode  of  the  Canteen  Crusade,  1905;  Farther  Story  of  Lieutenant 
Sandy  Ray,  1906;  Tonio,  Son  of  the  Sierras,  1906;  Captured:  a  Story  of 
Sandy  Bay,  1907;  The  Rock  of  Chicamauga,  1907;  To  the  Front,  1908; 
Lanier  of  the  Cavalry,  1909;  The  True  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  1914. 

MARY  HALLOCK  FOOTE.  (1847 .)  The  Led-Horse  Claim:  Romance 

of  a  Mining  Camp,  1883;  John  Bodeivin's  Testimony,  1885;  The  Last  As 
sembly  Ball,  1886;  The  Chosen  Valley,  1892;  Cceur  d'Alene,  1894;  In  Exile 
and  Other  Stories,  1894;  The  Cup  of  Trembling  and  Other  Stories,  1895; 
Little  Fig-tree  Stories,  1899;  The  Prodigal,  1900;  The  Desert  and  The 
Sown,  1902;  A  Touch  of  Sin  and  Other  Stories,  1903;  Royal  Americans, 
1910;  Picked  Company:  a  Novel,  1912. 

CLARA  LOUISE  BURNHAM.  (1854 .)  No  Gentleman,  1881;  A  Sane 

Lunatic,  1882;  Dearly  Bought,  1884;  Next  Door,  1886;  Young  Maids  and 
Old,  1888;  The  Mistress  of  Beech  Knoll,  1890;  Miss  Bragg's  Secretary, 
1892;  Dr.  Latimer,  1893;  Siceet  Clover,  1894;  The  Wise  Woman,  1895; 
Miss  Archer  Archer,  1897;  A  Great  T  we,  1898;  A  West  Point  Wooing, 
1899;  Miss  Prichard's  Wedding  Trip,  1901;  The  Right  Princess,  1902; 
Jewel,  1903;  Jewel's  Story  Book,  1904;  The  Opened  Shutters,  1906;  The 
Leaven  of  Love,  1908;  Clever  Betsey,  1910;  The  Inner  Flame,  1912. 

JULIAN  HAWTHORNE.  (1846 .)  Bressant,  1873;  Idolatry,  1874; 

Saxon  Studies,  1875;  Garth,  1877;  Mrs.  Gainsborough's  Diamonds,  1878; 


4H  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Archibald  Malmaison,  1879;  Sebastian  Strome,  1880;  Fortune's  Fool,  1883; 
Dust:  a  Sovel,  1883;  Beatrix  Randolph,  1883;  Prince  Saroni's  Wife,  1884; 
A'ob/e  Blood,  1884;  .Yaf/iunirl  Hawthorne  and  His  Wife:  a  Biography, 
1885;  Lot-e — or  o  Name,  1885;  Sinfire,  1886;  TVie  Trial  of  Gideon,  1886; 
John  Parmelee's  Curse,  1886;  Confessions  and  Criticisms,  1887;  five  novels 
from  the  Diary  of  Inspector  Byrnes:  The  Tragic  Mystery,  The  Great  Hank 
Robbery,  An  American  Penman,  Section  538,  1887,  and  Another's  Crime, 
1888;  The  Professor's  Sister:  a  Romance;  A  Miser  of  Second  Avenue,  1888; 
A  Dream  and  a  Forgetting,  1888;  David  Poindexter's  Disappearance, 
1888;  Kildliunns  Oak;  1889;  Constance,  1889;  Pauline,  1890;  A  Stage 
Friend,  1890;  American  Literature:  an  Elementary  Textbook  [with 
Leonard  Lemmon],  1891;  Humors  of  the  /'air,  1893;  Six  Cent  Sam's, 
1893;  The  Golden  Fleece:  a  Romance,  1896;  A  Fool  of  Nature, 
1896;  Love  Is  a  Spirit,  1896;  A  History  of  the  United  States,  1898;  Haw 
thorne  and  His  Circle,  1903;  The  Secret  of  Solomon,  1909;  Lovers  in 
Heaven,  1910;  The  Subterranean  Brotherhood,  11)14. 

BLANCHE  WILLIS  HOWARD,  Mrs.  von  TeufTel.  (1847-1898.)  One  Sum 
mer,  1877;  One  Year  Abroad,  1877;  Aunt  Serena,  1881;  Guenn:  a  H '</>•<• 
of  the  Breton  Coast,  1884;  The  Open  Door,  1891;  A  Felloice  and  His  Wife 
[with  W.  Sharp],  1892;  A  Battle  and  a  Boy,  1892;  No  Heroes,  1893; 
Seven  on  the  Highways,  1897;  Dionysius,  the  Weaver's  Heart's  Dearest, 
1899;  The  Garden  of  Eden,  1900. 

EDWARD  BELLAMY.  (1850-1898.)  Six  to  One:  a  Nantucket  Idyl,  1878; 
Dr.  Heidcnhoff's  Process,  1880;  Miss  Luddington's  Sister:  a  Romance  of 
Immortality,  1884;  Looking  Backward,  2000-1881,  1888;  Equality,  1897; 
A  Blindman's  World,  and  Other  Stories,  1898;  The  Duke  of  Stockbridge: 
a  Romance  of  Shay's  Rebellion,  1900. 

HJALMAB  HJORTH  BOYESEN.  (1848-1895.)  Gunnar,  1874;  A  Norse 
man's  Pilgrimage,  1875;  Tales  from  Tico  Hemispheres,  1876;  Falconberg, 
1879;  Goethe  and  Schiller:  Their  Lives  and  Works,  1879;  Queen  Titania, 
1881;  Ilka  on  the  Hill-Top,  1881;  Idyls  of  Norway  and  Other  Poems, 
1882;  A  Daughter  of  the  Philistines,  1883;  The  Story  of  Norway,  1886; 
The  Modern  Vikings,  1887;  Vagabond  Tales,  1889;  The  Light  of  Her  Coun 
tenance,  1889;  The  Mammon  of  Unrighteousness,  1891;  Essays  on  German 
Literature,  1892;  Boyhood  in  Norway,  1892;  The  Golden  Calf:  a  Novel, 
1892;  Social  Strugglers,  1893;  Commentary  on  the  Waitings  of  Henrik 
Ibsen,  1894;  Literary  and  Social  Silhouettes,  1894;  Essays  on  Scandinavian 
Literature,  1895. 

ARTHUR  SHF.RBURNE  HARDY.  (1847 .)  Francesca  of  Rimini:  a 

Poem,  1878;  But  Yet  a  Woman,  1883;  The  Wind  of  Destiny,  1886;  Passe 
Rose,  1889;  Life  and  Letters  of  Joseph  Hardy  Neesima,  1891;  Songs  of 
Two,  1900;  His  Daughter  First,  1903;  Aurelie,  1912;  Diane  and  Her 
Friends,  1914.  His  mathematical  works  not  listed. 

ROBERT  GRANT.  (1852 .)  The  Little  Tin  Gods-on-Wheels;  or,  So 
ciety  in  Our  Modern  Athens,  1879;  The  Confessions  of  a  Frivolous  Girl, 
1880;  The  Lambs:  a  Tragedy,  1882;  An  Average  Man,  1884;  Face  to  Face, 
1886;  The  Knave  of  Hearts:  a  Fairy  Story,  1886;  .4  Romantic  Young 
Lady,  1886;  Jack  Hall,  1887;  Jack  in  the  Bush;  or,  a  Summer  on  a  Sal- 


SHIFTING  CURRENTS  OF  FICTION  415 

mon  River,  1888;  The  Carletons,  1891;  Mrs.  Harold  Stagg,  1891;  The 
Reflections  of  a  Married  Man,  1892;  The  Opinions  of  a  Philosopher,  1893; 
The  Art  of  Living,  1895;  A  Bachelor's  Christmas,  1895;  The  North  Shore 
of  Massachusetts,  1896;  Search-Light  Letters,  1899;  Unleavened  Bread, 
1900;  The  Undercurrent,  1904;  The  Orchid,  1905;  Law-breakers  and  Other 
Stories,  1906;  The  Chippendales,  1909;  Confessions  of  a  Grandfather,  1912. 

FREDERICK  JESUP  STIMSON,  "J.  S.  of  Dale."  (1855 .)  Bollo's 

Journey  to  Cambridge,  1879;  Guerndale,  an  Old  Story,  1882;  The  Crime 
of  Henry  Vane,  1884;  The  Sentimental  Calendar,  1886;  First  Harvests, 
1888:  Mrs.  Knollys  and  Other  Stories,  1894;  Pirate  Gold,  1896;  King 
Noanett:  a  Story  of  Old  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  Bay,  1896;  Jethro 
Bacon  of  Sandwich,  1902;  In  Cure  of  Her  Soul,  1906.  His  law  publica 
tions  not  listed. 

HENRY  BLAKE  FULLER.  (1857 .)  The  Chevalier  of  Pensieri-Vani, 

1891;  The  Chatelaine  of  La  Trinitt,  1892;  The  Cliff -Dwellers,  1893;  With 
the  Procession,  1895;  The  Puppet-Booth:  Twelve  Plays,  1896;  From  the 
Other  Side:  Stories  of  Transatlantic  Travel,  1898;  The  Last  Refuge:  a 
Sicilian  Romance,  1900;  Under  the  Skylights,  1901;  Waldo  Trench  and 
Others:  Stories  of  Americans  in  Italy,  1908. 

FRANCIS  HOPKINSON  SMITH.  (1838-1915.)  Old  Lines  in  New  Black 
and  White,  1885;  Well-Worn  Roads,  1886;  A  White  Umbrella  in  Mexico, 
1889;  A  Book  of  the  Tile  Club,  1890;  Col.  Carter  of  Cartersville,  1891; 
A  Day  at  Laguerre's,  1892;  American  Illustrators,  1892;  A  Gentleman 
Vagabond  and  Some  Others,  1895;  Tom  Grogan,  1896;  Gondola  Days, 
1897;  Venice  of  To-day,  1897;  Caleb  West,  1898;  The  Other  Fellow,  1899; 
The  Fortunes  of  Oliver  Horn,  1902;  The  Under  Dog,  1903;  Col.  Carter's 
Christmas,  1904;  At  Close  Range,  1905;  The  Wood  Fire  in  Number  3, 
1905;  The  Tides  of  Barnegat,  1906;  The  Veiled  Lady,  1907;  The  Romance 
of  an  Old-Fashioned  Gentleman,  1907;  Peter,  1908;  Forty  Minutes  Late, 
1909;  Kennedy  Square,  1911;  The  Arm-Chair  at  the  Inn,  1912;  In  Thack 
eray's  London,  1913;  In  Dickens' 8  London,  1914. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

TIIE   ESSAYISTS 

In  forms  other  than  fiction  and  poetry  the  period  was  also 
voluminous.  The  greater  part  of  our  historical  writings  has 
been  produced  since  1870  and  the  same  is  true  of  our  biography. 
Literary  quality,  however,  has  suffered.  Emphasis  has  been 
placed  upon  material  rather  than  upon  graces  of  style;  upon 
matter,  but  little  upon  manner.  Never  before  have  historian 
and  biographer  been  so  tireless  in  their  search  for  sources: 
the  Battles  and  Leaders  of  the  Civil  War  is  a  veritable  library 
of  materials;  the  Life  of  Lincoln  by  Nicolay  and  Hay  contains 
one  million  five  hundred  thousand  words.  It  is  as  long  as  Ban 
croft's  whole  history  of  the  United  States,  it  is  twice  as  long  as 
Green's  History  of  the  English  People,  and  it  contains  three 
hundred  thousand  words  more  than  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  has  been  a  development  from  the 
spirit  of  the  era:  the  demand  for  actuality.  Never  before  such 
eagerness  to  uncover  new  facts,  to  present  documents,  to  be 
realistically  true,  but  it  has  been  at  the  expense  of  literary  style. 
A  few  books,  like  General  Grant's  Memoirs  and  Captain  Mahan's 
The  Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History,  have  had  the  power 
of  simplicity,  the  impelling  force  that  comes  from  conscious 
ness  only  of  the  message  to  be  delivered.  But  all  too  often  the 
material  has  been  presented  in  a  colorless,  journalistic  form 
that  bars  it  forever  from  consideration  as  literature  in  the 
higher  sense  of  that  term.  The  most  of  it,  even  the  life  of 
Lincoln,  is  to  be  placed  in  the  same  category  as  scientific  writ 
ings  and  all  those  other  prose  forms  that  are  concerned  only 
with  the  presenting  of  positive  knowledge.  Parkman  seems  to 
have  been  the  last  historian  who  was  able  to  present  his  material 
with  literary  distinction. 

The  essay  has  been  voluminous  all  through  the  period,  but 
it  too  has  changed  its  tone.  More  than  any  other  literary  form 
it  has  been  the  medium  through  which  we  may  trace  the  transi- 

416 


THE  ESSAYISTS  417 

tion  from  the  old  period  to  the  new.  American  literature  had 
begun  with  the  essay,  and  we  have  seen  how  the  form,  desig 
nated  by  the  name  of  sketch,  grew  in  the  hands  of  Irving  and 
Hawthorne  and  Poe  into  what  in  the  period  of  the  seventies 
became  recognized  as  a  distinct  literary  form  with  the  name 
of  short  story. 

The  literary  essay  is  a  classical  form :  to  flourish,  it  needs  the 
atmosphere  of  old  culture  and  established  social  traditions;  it 
must  work  in  the  materials  of  classic  literature ;  it  is  leisurely 
in  method,  discursive,  gently  sentimental.  It  was  the  dominat 
ing  form,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  the  classical  age  of  Addison, 
the  age  of  manners  and  mind.  It  was  peculiarly  fitted,  too, 
to  be  the  literary  vehicle  of  the  later  classical  age  in  America, 
the  Europe-centered  period  of  Irving  and  Emerson  and  Willis 
and  Holmes.  The  early  pilgrims  to  the  holy  land  of  the  Old 
World  sent  back  their  impressions  and  dreamings  in  the  form 
of  essays:  Longfellow's  Outre-Mer,  for  example,  and  Willis's 
Pencillings  by  the  Way.  On  the  same  shelf  with  The  Sketch 
Book  belong  Willis's  Letters  from  Under  a  Bridge,  Dana's  The 
Idle  Man,  Donald  G.  Mitchell's  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor,  Curtis 's 
Prue  and  I,  and  a  great  mass  of  similar  work,  enough  indeed  to 
give  color  and  even  name  to  its  period.  This  shelf  more  than 
any  other  marks  the  extent  of  England's  dominion  over  the 
literature  of  the  first  three  quarters  of  the  nineteenth  century: 
it  was  the  most  distinctive  product  of  our  classical  age.  Until 
America  has  a  rich  background  of  her  own  with  old  culture  and 
traditions,  with  venerable  native  classics  from  which  to  quote, 
and  a  long  vista  of  romantic  history  down  which  to  look,  her 
contemplative  and  strictly  literary  essays  must  necessarily  be 
redolent  of  the  atmosphere  of  other  lands. 


The  National  Period,  with  its  new  breath  of  all-Americanism, 
its  new  romantic  spirit,  its  youthful  exuberance,  and  its  self- 
realization,  has  been,  therefore,  not  a  period  in  which  the  essay 
of  the  old  type  could  find  congenial  soil.  Instead  of  the  Irving 
sketch  there  has  been  the  vivid,  sharply  cut  short  story ;  instead 
of  the  contemplative,  dreamy  study  of  personalities  and  in 
stitutions — Irving 's  "The  Broken  Heart,"  Longfellow's  "Pere 
la  Chaise" — there  have  been  incisive,  analytical,  clearly  cut 


418  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

special  studies,  like  Woodrow  Wilson's  Mere  Literature  and 
Other  Essays;  instead  of  the  delightful,  discursive  personal  tat 
tle  of  a  Charles  Lamb  and  a  Dr.  Holmes  there  has  been  the 
colorless  editorial  essay,  all  force  and  facts,  or  the  undistinctive, 
business-like  special  article,  prosiest  of  all  prose. 

The  transition  figure  in  the  history  of  the  American  essay 
was  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  the  last  of  the  contemplative 
Sketch  Book  essayists,  and,  with  Higginson,  Burroughs,  Maurice 
Thompson,  and  others,  a  leading  influence  in  the  bringing  in  of 
the  new  freshness  and  naturalness  and  journalistic  abandon 
that  gave  character  to  the  prose  of  the  later  period.  He  was  a 
New  Englander,  one  of  that  small  belated  group  born  in  the 
twenties — Mitchell,  Hale,  Higginson,  Norton,  for  example — 
that  found  itself  in  a  Janus-like  position  between  the  old  school 
of  Emerson  and  Longfellow  and  the  new  school  of  non-New  Eng- 
landers — Harte,  Hay,  Howells,  Mark  Twain.  Warner  was  pe 
culiarly  a  transition  figure.  He  could  collaborate  with  Mark 
Twain  on  that  most  distinctively  latter-day  novel  The  Gilded 
Age,  and  be  classed  by  his  generation  with  the  humorists  of 
the  Burdette,  Josh  Billings  group,  yet  at  the  death  of  George 
William  Curtis  he  could  be  chosen  as  without  question  the  only 
logical  heir  to  the  Editor's  Easy  Chair  department  of  Harper's 
Magazine. 

Warner  was  born  in  1829,  the  birth  year  of  Dr.  S.  Weir 
Mitchell,  and  his  birthplace  was  a  farm  in  western  Massachu 
setts,  where  his  ancestors  for  generations  had  been  sturdy  Puri 
tan  yeomen.  The  atmosphere  of  this  home  and  the  round  of  its 
life  he  has  described  with  autobiographic  pen  in  Being  a  Boy, 
the  most  valuable  of  all  his  studies.  Concerning  the  rest  of  his 
life  one  needs  only  to  record  that  he  was  graduated  from  Hamil 
ton  College  in  1851  and  from  the  law  department  of  the  Uni 
versity  of  Pennsylvania  in  1857,  and  that  after  four  years  of 
legal  practice  in  Chicago  he  was  invited  by  his  classmate,  Sena 
tor  J.  R.  Hawley,  to  remove  to  Hartford,  Connecticut,  to  become 
associate  editor  of  the  paper  that  was  soon  merged  with  the 
Hartford  Courant.  To  this  paper  either  as  its  editor  or  as  a 
contributor  he  gave  the  best  years  of  his  life.  He  used  his 
vacations  for  foreign  travel,  at  one  time  spending  a  year  and 
a  half  abroad,  and  in  his  later  years  he  saw  much  of  his  own 
land,  but  always  he  traveled  pen  in  hand,  ready  to  embody  every 


THE  ESSAYISTS  419 

observation  and  sentiment  in  a  letter  for  the  readers  at  home. 
Travel  letters  of  the  older  type  they  were,  such  as  Taylor  wrote 
home  from  Germany  and  Curtis  sent  from  the  Nile  and  the 
Levant,  gently  sentimental,  humorous  in  a  pervasive  way,  per 
fectly  natural,  unconscious  of  style. 

Warner  was  forty  and  a  confirmed  journalist  before  he  pub 
lished  anything  in  book  form,  and  even  this  first  volume  was  not 
written  with  book  intent.  He  had  contributed  a  rambling  series 
of  papers  to  the  Courant,  a  sort  of  humorous  echo  of  Greeley's 
What  I  Know  about  Farming,  careless,  newspapery,  funny  in 
a  chuckling  sort  of  way,  and  perfectly  unconventional  and  free 
from  effort.  Naturalness  was  its  main  charm.  The  period  was 
ready  for  out-of-doors  themes  simply  presented,  and  it  found 
an  enthusiastic  circle  of  readers  who  demanded  its  publication 
in  book  form.  Henry  "Ward  Beecher  was  among  them  and  as 
an  inducement  he  promised  an  introductory  letter.  The  result 
was  My  Summer  in  a  Garden,  1870,  a  book  that  sprang  into 
wide  popularity  and  that  undoubtedly  was  one  of  the  forma 
tive  influences  of  the  new  period.  He  followed  it  with  Backlog 
Studies,  a  series  of  sketches  of  the  Donald  G.  Mitchell  variety, 
and  then  with  various  travel  books  like  Saunterings  and  My 
Winter  on  the  Nile.  Late  in  life  he  published  novels,  A  Little 
Journey  in  the  World,  The  Golden  House,  and  others  dealing 
with  phases  of  life  in  New  York  City,  and  he  served  as  editor 
of  several  important  series  of  books,  notably  The  American 
Men  of  Letters  Series  of  biographies,  to  which  he  himself  con 
tributed  the  life  of  Irving. 

Time  enough  has  elapsed  to  enable  us  to  consider  the  work 
of  Warner  apart  from  the  charm  of  his  personal  presence, 
and  it  is  seen  now  that  his  generation  overestimated  his  work. 
He  was  in  no  sense  an  inspired  soul;  he  had  little  to  offer  that 
was  really  new.  He  wrote  like  the  practical  editor  of  a  daily 
paper,  fluently,  copiously,  unhesitatingly.  The  style  is  that  of 
the  practised  worker  who  dictates  to  his  stenographer.  There 
is  lack  of  incisiveness,  sharpness  of  outline,  cohesion  of  thought. 
He  lacks  revision,  flashes  of  insight,  creative  moments  when 
the  pen  is  forgotten.  He  wrote  on  many  topics,  but  there  are 
no  passages  that  one  is  compelled  to  quote.  He  was  a  classicist 
who  wrote  with  perfect  coolness,  just  as  others  had  written  be 
fore  him.  His  gentle  spirit,  his  sentiment,  his  Puritan  con- 


420  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

science,  and  a  certain  serenity  of  view  that  whispered  of  high 
character  and  perfect  breeding,  endeared  him  to  his  first  readers. 
But  his  style  of  humor  belonged  only  to  his  own  generation — 
it  was  not  embodied  at  all  in  a  humorous  character;  and  his 
ethical  teachings  seem  trite  now  and  conventional.  His  in 
fluence  at  a  critical  period  of  American  literature  entitles  him 
to  serious  consideration,  but  he  won  for  himself  no  permanent 
place.  He  will  live  longest,  perhaps,  in  a  few  of  his  shorter 
pieces:  Being  a  Boy,  "How  Spring  Came  in  New  England,'* 
"A-Hunting  the  Deer,"  and  "Old  Mountain  Phelps." 

There  are  those  who  would  rate  his  novels  above  his  essays, 
those  indeed  who  would  rate  them  even  with  the  work  of 
Howells.  Not  many,  however.  That  his  fiction  has  about  it  a 
certain  power  can  not  be  denied.  Its  author  had  the  journalistic 
sense  of  the  value  of  contemporary  events,  as  well  as  the  journal 
istic  faculty  for  gathering  interesting  facts.  He  had,  too,  what 
so  many  novelists  lack,  the  power  to  trace  by  almost  imperceptible 
processes  the  gradual  growth  of  a  character.  A  Little  Journey 
in  the  World,  for  instance,  is  a  study  of  degeneration,  skilfully 
done.  A  woman  who  has  been  reared  among  humble  yet  en 
nobling  surroundings  removes  to  New  York  and  marries  a  very 
rich  man  and  we  are  shown  how  little  by  little  all  that  is  really 
fine  at  the  heart  of  her  life  is  eaten  away  though  the  surface 
remains  as  beautiful  as  ever.  There  is  a  naturalness  about  it 
that  is  charming,  and  there  is  evident  everywhere  an  honesty 
of  purpose  and  a  depth  of  experience  that  are  unusual,  but  one 
may  not  say  more.  The  novels  came  from  the  critical  impulse 
rather  than  from  the  creative.  They  are  humanitarian  docu 
ments  rather  than  creations  breathing  the  breath  of  life.  They 
do  not  move  us.  To  realize  where  they  fail  one  has  but  to  com 
pare  his  chapters  in  The  Gilded  Age  with  Mark  Twain's.  It 
is  like  looking  from  a  still-life  picture  on  a  parlor  wall  out  upon 
an  actual  steamboat  pulling  showily  up  to  a  Mississippi  wharf. 

II 

The  opposite  of  Warner  in  every  respect  was  Lafcadio  Hearn, 
a  figure  more  picturesque  even  than  Joaquin  Miller  and  more 
puzzling  than  Whitman.  Instead  of  serene  classicism,  genius; 
instead  of  Puritan  inflexibility  and  reverence  for  the  respectable, 
tumultuous  wanderings — a  nan  without  a  country,  without  a 


THE  ESSAYISTS  421 

religion,  without  anything  fixed  save  a  restless  love  of  the  beauti 
ful — emotional,  a  bundle  of  nerves,  moody,  sudden,  the  gor 
geous  Gallic  at  eternal  odds  with  the  florid,  beauty-loving 
Hellenic;  a  man  forever  homeless,  yet  forever  pathetic  with  a 
nostalgia  that  finally  broke  his  heart.  His  personality  was  a 
strangely  elusive  one,  and  his  biography,  especially  in  its  earlier 
years,  is  as  full  of  romantic  conjecture  as  De  Quincey's  early 
life  or  Byron's.  His  very  name  was  romantic.  His  father, 
member  of  an  ancient  Irish  family,  had  accompanied  his  regi 
ment  as  surgeon-major  into  the  East,  and  while  stationed  at 
Corfu  had  become  infatuated  with  a  beautiful  Grecian  girl, 
Rosa  Cerigote,  and  had  married  her.  Lafcadio  they  named  their 
son  from  the  island  where  he  was  born,  his  mother's  home, 
Leucadia,  in  modern  Greek  Lefcadia,  the  Ionian  island  of 
Sappho.  Here  he  spent  his  babyhood,  how  much  of  it  we  do 
not  know.  Of  his  father,  he  has  said  nothing,  and  of  his  mother, 
only  this  hint  in  a  later  bit  of  impressionism — elusive,  sugges 
tive,  characteristic: 

I  have  memory  of  a  place  and  a  magical  time,  in  which  the  sun  and 
the  moon  were  larger  and  brighter  than  now.  Whether  it  was  of  this 
life  or  of  some  life  before,  I  can  not  tell,  but  I  know  the  sky  was  very 
much  more  blue,  and  nearer  to  the  world — almost  as  it  seems  to  be 
come  above  the  masts  of  a  steamer  steaming  into  the  equatorial  sum 
mer.  .  .  .  Each  day  there  were  new  wonders  and  new  pleasures  for 
ine,  and  all  that  country  and  time  were  softly  ruled  by  one  who 
thought  only  of  ways  to  make  me  happy.  .  .  .  When  day  was  done 
and  there  fell  the  great  hush  of  the  light  before  moonrise,  she  would 
tell  me  stories  that  made  me  tingle  from  head  to  foot  with  pleasure. 
I  have  never  heard  any  other  stories  half  so  beautiful.  And  when  the 
pleasure  became  too  great,  she  would  sing  a  weird  little  song  which 
always  brought  sleep.  At  last  there  came  a  parting  day;  and  she  wept 
and  told  me  of  a  charm  she  had  given  that  I  must  never,  never  lose, 
because  it  would  keep  me  young,  and  give  me  power  to  return.  But  I 
never  returned.  And  the  years  went;  and  one  day  I  knew  I  had 
lost  the  charm,  and  had  become  ridiculously  old. 

Was  it  the  ^Egean  island  of  his  birth  or  was  it  the  West  Indian 
island  to  which  his  father  later  was  ordered  with  his  regiment? 
We  do  not  know.  We  know,  however,  that  the  mother  lived  for 
a  time  in  Ireland,  that  another  son  was  born,  and  then  when 
the  elder  boy  was  seven  she  went  away  to  Smyrna  never  to 
return.  The  rest  is  conjecture,  save  for  the  significant  fact 
ttiat  both  parents  soon  afterward  married  again. 


422  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

The  boy,  unwelcome,  forlorn,  out  of  sympathy  with  his  sur 
roundings,  was  sent  to  live  with  his  aunt  in  Ireland,  then  later 
was  put  to  school  in  Prance  in  preparation  for  the  priesthood. 
Two  years  in  France,  formative  years  in  which  he  learned  among 
a  myriad  of  other  things  the  fluent  use  of  French,  then  in  1865 
we  find  him  in  the  Roman  Catholic  college  at  Durham,  England, 
where  came  to  him  the  first  great  tragedy  of  his  life:  an  acci 
dent  at  play  that  left  him  blinded  in  one  eye  and  partly- 
blinded  in  the  other.  Soon  afterwards  came  the  break  with  his 
aunt — father  and  mother  had  passed  out  of  his  life — he  refused 
to  become  a  priest,  refused  to  live  longer  in  any  paths  save  his 
own,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  was  a  wanderer. 

There  is  much  in  his  life  and  temperament  to  suggest  De 
Quincey.  Hearn,  too,  for  a  vague  period — two  or  three  years  it 
may  have  been — wandered  in  the  lower  strata  of  London,  half 
dead  with  hunger  and  sickness,  aflame  with  imagination,  rest 
less,  ambitious.  At  nineteen  we  find  him  in  New  York,  read 
ing  in  the  public  library,  eagerly,  omnivorously,  despite  his 
feeble  vision,  then  suddenly,  how  we  do  not  know,  he  is  in  Cin 
cinnati,  Ohio,  where  he  makes  the  whole  city  gasp  with  horror 
at  the  story  he  writes  of  a  murder  in  one  of  their  narrow  streets, 
and  secures  a  position  on  the  Enquirer.  In  1877  he  has  wan 
dered  as  far  south  as  New  Orleans,  where  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life  he  finds  congenial  atmosphere  and  where  he  supports  him 
self  by  reporting  for  the  Times-Democrat. 

Now  it  was  that  his  French  schooling  had  its  effect.  The 
Creole  patois  delighted  him;  he  compiled  a  book  of  Creole 
proverbs,  Gombo  Zhebes  he  fantastically  called  it;  and  he  fed 
his  imagination  with  the  old  French  past  of  the  city,  wandering 
as  Cable  had  done  among  its  ancient  buildings,  and,  like  Cable 
again,  devouring  its  romantic  old  chronicles.  French  novels  he 
read  interminably,  eagerly,  especially  the  romantics — Hugo, 
Gautier,  Baudelaire.  How  richly  he  read  them  we  learn  from 
his  letters,  most  of  all  from  those  written  in  his  later  life  to 
Professor  Basil  Hall  Chamberlain  and  preserved  in  Elizabeth 
Bisland's  third  volume.  Few  have  read  more  discerningly  or 
have  voiced  their  findings  more  brilliantly.  This  of  Loti: 

There  is  not  much  heart  in  Loti,  but  there  is  a  fine  brain. — To 
me  Loti  seems  for  a  space  to  have  looked  into  Nature's  whole  splendid 
burning:  fulgurant  soul,  and  to  have  written  under  her  very  deepes. 


THE  ESSAYISTS  423 

and  strongest  inspiration.  He  was  young.  Then  the  color  and  the 
light  faded,  and  only  the  worn-out  blase  nerves  remained;  and  the  poet 
became — a  little  morbid  modern  affected  Frenchman. 

Strange  self-revealment.  It  was  of  himself  he  was  speaking, 
had  he  but  realized  it.  He  too  began  with  power  under  the 
deepest  and  strongest  inspiration;  he  too  had  caught  a  vision, 
splendid,  burning,  fulgurant.  If  there  was  an  undoubted  genius 
in  our  national  period  it  was  Hearn.  He  poured  his  eager 
dreamings  at  first  into  the  New  Orleans  papers :  ' '  Fantastics, ' ' 
they  have  been  called,  by  the  editor  who  of  late  has  hunted  them 
from  their  forgotten  columns.  Then  came  Chita,  written  after 
a  visit  to  Grande  Isle  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  published  first 
in  the  Times-Democrat  with  the  title  Torn  Letters,  and  then  in 
Harper's  Magazine,  April,  1888. 

Here  for  the  first  time  we  get  the  measure  of  the  man,  his 
Celtic  imagination,  fervor  and  intensity,  his  Greek  passion  for 
beauty.  It  is  not  English  at  all:  it  is  the  dream  of  a  Celtic 
Greek,  who  has  saturated  himself  with  the  French  romantics 
and  the  color  and  the  profusion  of  the  tropic  gulf  lands.  It 
is  not,  as  the  magazine  termed  it,  a  novelette;  it  is  a  loosely 
gathered  bundle  of  fictional  sketches,  lurid  patches,  "torn  let 
ters,"  indeed,  written  with  torrential  power  and  blazing  with 
color.  Everywhere  landscapes  intense,  drawn  with  fewest 
strokes,  impressions,  suggestions.  He  would  make  you  feel  the 
desolate  shore  on  the  gulf  side  of  the  island,  but  he  selects  only 
a  single  detail: 

The  trees — where  there  are  any  trees — all  bend  away  from  the  sea; 
and  even  of  bright  hot  days  when  the  wind  sleeps,  there  is  something 
grotesquely  pathetic  in  their  look  of  agonized  terror.  A  group  of  oaks 
at  Grande  Isle  I  remember  as  especially  suggestive:  five  stooping  sil 
houettes  in  line  against  the  horizon,  like  fleeing  women  with  streaming 
garments  and  wind-blown  hair — bowing  grievously  and  thrusting  out 
arms  desperately  northward  as  to  save  themselves  from  falling.  And 
they  are  being  pursued  indeed — for  the  sea  is  devouring  the  land. 
Many  and  many  a  mile  of  ground  has  yielded  to  the  tireless  charging 
of  Ocean's  cavalry. 

Always  is  he  a  colorist,  and  always  does  he  use  his  colors 
daintily,  effectively,  distinctively — one  feels  rather  than  sees; 

The  charm  of  a  single  summer  day  on  these  island  shores  is  some 
thing  impossible  to  express,  never  to  be  forgotten.  Rarely,  in  the 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

paler  zones,  do  earth  and  heaven  take  such  luminosity:  those  will  best 
understand  me  who  have  seen  the  splendor  of  a  West  Indian  sky. 
And  yet  there  is  a  tenderness  of  tint,  a  caress  of  color  in  these  Gulf- 
days  which  is  not  of  the  Antilles — a  spirituality,  as  of  eternal  tropical 
spring. 

It  describes  his  own  style ;  one  need  say  no  more. 

When  he  would  describe  action  there  is  in  him  a  Byronic 
power  that  lays  hold  on  one  and  chokes  and  stifles.  Who  out 
side  of  Don  Juan  has  made  us  feel  so  fearfully  a  tropic  hurricane! 

Then  arose  a  frightful  cry — the  hoarse,  hideous,  indescribable  cry 
of  hopeless  fear — the  despairing:  animal-cry  man  utters  when  suddenly 
brought  face  to  face  with  Nothingness,  without  preparation,  without 
consolation,  without  possibility  of  respite.  Sauve  qui  peut!  Some 
wrenched  down  the  doors;  some  clung  to  the  heavy  banquet  tables,  to 
the  sofas,  to  the  billiard  tables — during  one  terrible  instant — against 
fruitless  heroisms,  against  futile  generosities — raged  all  the  frenzy  of 
selfishness,  all  the  brutalities  of  panic.  And  then — then  came,  thun 
dering  through  the  blackness,  the  giant  swells,  boom  on  boom! — One 
crash! — the  huge  frame  building  rocks  like  a  cradle,  seesaws,  crackles. 
What  are  human  shrieks  now? — the  tornado  is  shrieking!  Another! — 
chandeliers  splinter;  lights  are  dashed  out;  a  sweeping  cataract  hurls 
in :  the  immense  hall  rises — oscillates — twirls  as  upon  a  pivot — crepi 
tates — crumbles  into  ruin.  Crash  again! — the  swirling  wreck  dissolves 
into  the  wallowing  of  another  monster  billow;  and  a  hundred  cottages 
overturn,  spin  on  sudden  eddies,  quiver,  disjoint,  and  melt  into  the 
seething. 

So  the  Hurricane  passed. 

Chita,  like  all  the  rest  of  Ilearn's  work,  is  a  thing  of  frag 
ments.  It  leaps  and  bounds,  it  chokes  with  tropic  heat,  it  blazes 
with  the  sunsets  of  the  Mexican  gulf,  it  stagnates  with  torrid 
siestas,  it  is  raucous  with  the  voices  of  tropic  insects  and  birds. 
It  is  incoherent,  rhapsodic,  half  picture,  half  suggestion — ma 
terials  rather  than  final  structure.  The  style  is  wholly  Gallic, 
like  Cable's  early  style — sudden  breaks — dashes — sentences 
stripped  to  the  bare  nouns  and  adjectives,  swift  shiftings  of 
scenes,  interjected  exclamations,  prayers: 

Thou  primordial  Sea,  the  awfulness  of  whose  antiquity  hath  stricken 
all  mythology  dumb — thou  most  wrinkled  living  Sea,  etc. 

Then  swiftly  following: 

Eighteen  hundred  and  sixty-seven; — midsummer  in  the  pest-smitten 
city  of  New  Orleans. 


THE  ESSAYISTS  425 

Heat  motionless  and  ponderous.  The  steel-blue  of  the  sky  bleached 
from  the  furnace-circle  of  the  horizon ; — the  lukewarm  river  yellow 
and  noiseless  as  a  torrent  of  fluid  wax.  The  nights  began  with  a  black 
heat; — there  were  hours  when  the  acrid  air  seemed  to  ferment  for 
stagnation,  and  to  burn  the  bronchial  tubing; — then,  toward  morning 
it  would  grow  chill  with  venomous  vapors,  with  morbific  dews — till  the 
sun  came  up  to  lift  the  torpid  moisture,  and  to  fill  the  buildings  with 
oven-heat.  And  the  interminable  procession  of  mourners  and  hearses 
and  carriages  again  began  to  circulate  between  the  centers  of  life  and 
death ; — and  long  trains  of  steamships  rushed  from  the  port  with  heavy 
burden  of  fugitives. 

Then  terror  that  lays  cold  hands  on  the  heart :  Julian  dying  of  fever. 

From  New  Orleans  he  went  in  1887  to  the  Windward  Islands 
for  new  sensation,  new  color,  new  barbaric  areas  of  human  life. 
Two  Years  in  the  French  West  Indies  is  the  literary  result  of 
it,  a  chaotic  book,  flashlights,  impressions,  but  no  single  com 
pleted  impression,  no  totality,  but  the  soul  of  the  West  Indies 
none  the  less,  revealed  with  a  rare,  queer  art  that  was  individual. 
But  no  place,  not  even  those  Circe  islands  which  he  paints  as 
the  dream  and  the  ultimate  of  human  desire,  could  detain  him 
long.  Fickleness  was  in  his  blood,  wandering  was  his  birthright. 
Again  he  is  in  New  York,  and  then  with  a  commission  from  the 
Harpers  he  sails  to  Japan,  where,  in  the  rush  and  tumult  of  new 
sensation,  he  forgets  his  commission  and  loses  himself  completely 
in  the  new  delicious  world  of  impression. 

For  Hearn  was  as  unpractical  as  Shelley  and  he  was  without 
Shelley's  ideals  and  altruistic  dreams.  He  lived  in  a  vague 
world  of  vision,  of  sensation,  of  intangible  beauty.  He  could 
say  of  himself: 

Always  having  lived  in  hopes  and  imaginations,  the  smallest  practical 
matters  that  everybody  should  know,  I  don't  know  anything  about. 
Nothing,  for  example,  about  a  boat,  a  horse,  a  farm,  an  orchard,  a 
watch,  a  garden.  Nothing  about  what  a  man  ought  to  do  under  any 
possible  circumstances.  I  know  nothing  but  sensation  and  books. 

Though  he  was  now  forty,  he  entered  this  new  world  as  one  new 
born  into  it.  He  adopted  its  costume,  he  slept  with  his  head 
on  a  wooden  pillow,  he  acquired  citizenship,  he  married  a  Japa 
nese  wife  and  established  a  Japanese  home,  and  he  even  went 
over  completely  to  the  Buddhist  religion. 

The  book  Glimpses  of  Unfamiliar  Japan,  1894,  marks  the  be 
ginning  of  his  second  literary  period.  Henceforth  his  writings 


426  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

center  about  Japan.  He  wrote  no  treatise,  no  serious  study  of 
jM-tual  conditions;  he  wrote  impressions,  fragmentary  suggestions 
of  the  Japan  that  was  passing  away,  the  romantic  Japan  of  the 
ideal  old  regime,  survivals  of  which  he  found  everywhere. 
Japanese  art  and  Japanese  romance  found  in  him  a  curious 
affinity.  They  mellowed  and  soothed  the  tumultuous  spirit  of 
his  first  art  period.  His  impressionism  became  more  subtly  sug 
gestive,  more  magically  vague,  more  daintily  colored.  There 
had  always  been  within  him  a  strong  element  of  mysticism, 
legacy  of  his  Irish  ancestry,  and  the  subtly  mystical  side  of 
Buddhism  appealed  to  it  strongly.  He  was  able  to  interpret  it 
for  occidental  comprehension,  and  he  was  able  to  make  more 
comprehensible  the  subtle  connotation  of  Japanese  art,  and  to 
catch  the  subtler  inner  consciousness  of  Japan  as  no  other  of  the 
Western  world  has  ever  caught  it.  In  his  first  enthusiasm  he 
wrote : 

This  is  a  land  where  one  can  really  enjoy  the  Inner  Life.  Every 
one  has  an  inner  life  of  his  own — which  no  other  life  can  see,  and  the 
great  secrets  of  which  are  never  revealed,  though  occasionally  when 
we  create  something  beautiful  we  betray  a  faint  glimpse  of  it. 

But  the  newness  of  this  new  world  he  had  entered  wore  away 
at  length.  He  was  a  creature  of  enthusiastic  moments  and  he 
needed  swift  changes  of  sensation.  He  had  reveled  in  the  old, 
ideal  Japan,  but  he  found  himself  unable  to  live  in  it.  A  new 
regime  had  begun.  He  was  filled  with  contempt  at  what  he 
called  "the  frank  selfishness,  the  apathetic  vanity,  the  shallow, 
vulgar  skepticism  of  the  new  Japan  that  prates  its  contempt 
about  Tempo  times,  and  ridicules  the  dear  old  men  of  the 
premeiji  era."  His  last  years  were  bitter  with  financial  embar 
rassment,  and  full  of  feverish  literary  creation  for  the  sake  of 
his  growing  family.  The  glow  and  fervor  and  genius  of  his 
first  period  faded  more  and  more  from  his  work; — he  himself 
faded  out.  He  felt  the  gulf  that  he  had  erected  between  himself 
and  his  race.  To  his  sister  he  wrote:  "I  feel  myself  in  exile; 
and  your  letters  and  photographs  only  make  me  homesick  for 
English  life."  He  died  of  his  own  vehemence,  worn  out  by 
oversensation,  unnerved  by  restlessness  and  nostalgia  and  long 
ing  for  he  knew  not  what. 

The  likeness  of  Hearn  to  De  Quincey  is  almost  complete.     He 


THE  ESSAYISTS  427 

had  De  Quincey's  irresoluteness,  his  jangling  nerves,  his  domi 
nating  fancy,  his  discursiveness,  his  gorgeous  imagination,  his 
oriental  soul  hampered  with  the  fetters  of  occidental  science. 
He  too  was  essentially  fragmentary  in  his  literary  output,  a  man 
of  intense  moods  intensely  painted,  a  man  of  books  but  of  no 
single,  unified,  compelling  book.  One  may  not  read  essays  like 
"Gothic  Horror''  or  "The  Nightmare  Touch,"  or  a  passage 
like  this  from  ' '  Vespertina  Cognitio, ' '  and  not  think  of  the  great 
English  opium-eater: 

It  must  have  been  well  after  midnight  when  I  felt  the  first  vague 
uneasiness — the  suspicion — that  precedes  a  nightmare.  I  was  half- 
conscious,  dream-conscious  of  the  actual — knew  myself  in  that  very 
room — wanted  to  get  up.  Immediately  the  uneasiness  grew  into  terror, 
because  I  found  that  I  could  not  move.  Something  unutterable  in  the 
air  was  mastering  will.  I  tried  to  cry  out,  and  my  utmost  effort  re 
sulted  only  in  a  whisper  too  low  for  any  one  to  hear.  Simultaneously 
I  became  aware  of  a  Step  ascending  the  stair — a  muffled  heaviness;  and 
the  real  nightmare  began — the  horror  of  the  ghastly  magnetism  that 
held  voice  and  limb — the  hopeless  will-struggle  against  dumbness  and 
impotence.  The  stealthy  Step  approached — but  with  lentor  malevo 
lently  measured — slowly,  slowly,  as  if  the  stairs  were  miles  deep.  It 
gained  the  threshold — waited.  Gradually  then,  and  without  sound,  the 
locked  door  opened;  and  the  Thing  entered,  bending  as  it  came — a 
thing  robed — feminine — reaching  to  the  roof,  not  to  be  looked  at!  A 
floor-plank  creaked  as  It  neared  the  bed; — and  then — with  a  frantic 
effort — I  woke,  bathed  in  sweat;  my  heart  beating  as  if  it  were  going 
to  burst.  The  shrine-light  had  died :  in  the  blackness  I  could  see  noth 
ing;  but  I  thought  I  heard  that  Step  retreating.  I  certainly  heard 
the  plank  creak  again.  With  the  panic  still  upon  me,  I  was  actually 
unable  to  stir.  The  wisdom  of  striking  a  match  occurred  to  me,  but 
I  dared  not  yet  rise.  Presently,  as  I  held  my  breath  to  listen,  a  new 
wave  of  black  fear  passed  through  me;  for  I  heard  moanings — long 
nightmare  moanings — meanings  that  seemed  to  be  answering  each  other 
from  two  different  rooms  below.  And  then  close  to  me  my  guide  began 
to  moan — hoarsely,  hideously.  I  cried  to  him: — 

"Louis !— Louis !" 

We  both  sat  up  at  once. 

Like  De  Quincey,  he  lingers  over  the  flavor  of  words,  gathering 
them  everywhere  he  may  and  gloating  over  them,  tasting  them 
with  half-closed  eyes  like  an  epicure,  and  using  them  ever  deli 
cately,  suggestively,  inevitably. 

For  me  words  have  color,  form,  character:  they  have  faces,  ports, 
manners,  gesticulations;  they  have  moods,  humors,  eccentricities; — 
they  have  tints,  tones,  personalities.  .  .  .  Surely  I  have  never  yet 


428  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

and  never  expect  to  make  any  money.  Neither  do  I  expect  to  write 
ever  for  the  multitude.  I  write  for  beloved  friends  who  can  see  color 
in  words,  can  smell  the  perfume  of  syllables  in  blossom,  can  be  shocked 
with  the  fine  elfish  cirri ricity  of  words.  And  in  the  eternal  order  of 
things,  words  will  eventually  have  their  rights  recognized  by  the  people. 

His  essays,  therefore,  even  as  he  has  intimated,  are  for  the 
few  who  are  attuned  to  them,  who  have  sense  for  delicate  sug 
gestion,  for  "the  phosphorescing  of  words,  the  fragrance  of 
words,  the  noisomeness  of  words,  the  tenderness,  the  hardness, 
the  dryness  or  juiciness  of  words.'*  Aside  from  his  vision  of 
beauty,  his  intensity,  his  suggestiveness  of  style,  he  has  brought 
not  much.  The  romancers  of  the  period,  a  few  of  them,  like 
Grace  King,  for  example,  have  felt  his  influence,  but  it  has  not 
been  a  large  one.  He  stands  almost  an  isolated  figure  in  his 
period,  an  intensely  individual  soul,  a  solitary  genius  like  Poe. 
His  place  is  a  secure  one.  His  circle  of  readers  will  never  be 
large,  but  it  will  always  be  constant. 

Ill 

Another  phase  of  French  influence  one  finds  in  the  work  of 
Agnes  Repplier,  perhaps  the  leading  writer  of  "the  light  essay" 
—the  term  is  her  own — in  the  later  years  of  the  period.  Born 
of  French  parentage  in  Philadelphia,  educated  at  a  convent 
where  prevailed  French  language  and  ideals,  she  was  Gallic  both 
by  temperament  and  training.  She  was  not  influenced  as  Cable 
undoubtedly  was  influenced  and  Hearn:  there  is  small  trace  in 
her  essays  of  French  style  echoed  consciously  or  unconsciously. 
The  influence  was  deeper,  it  was  temperamental  and  racial,  mani 
festing  itself  spontaneously  in  the  display  of  those  literary 
qualities  that  we  associate  with  the  word  "French."  Her 
favorite  reading  was  largely  in  the  English.  She  read  enor 
mously  and  she  read  note-book  in  hand.  She  added,  moreover, 
culture  and  impressions  by  much  residence  abroad,  and  when  she 
began  to  write  it  was  with  rich  store  of  material.  She  began 
deliberately  and  she  worked  like  a  true  classicist,  leisurely,  with 
no  genius,  and  no  message  to  urge  her  on.  Her  delight  it  was 
to  talk  about  her  reading,  to  add  entertaining  episodes,  to  em 
broider  with  witty  observation  and  pithy  quotation  or  epigram. 
Save  for  the  autobiographical  study  "In  Our  Convent  Days," 
her  writings  mostly  deal  with  the  world  of  books. 


THE  ESSAYISTS  429 

Miss  Repplier  first  came  into  notice  in  1886  when  one  of  her 
essays  came  to  Aldrich,  who  was  delighted  with  it  and  who  made 
haste  to  introduce  her  to  the  Atlantic  circle.  Two  years  later 
came  her  first  book,  Books  and  Men,  and  since  that  time  her 
essays,  goodly  in  number  and  scattered  through  many  maga 
zines,  have  become  a  well-known  feature  of  the  times.  Themes 
she  takes  to  suit  her  fancy,  apparently  at  random,  though  more 
often  phases  of  her  beloved  "happy  half  century":  "A  Short 
Defense  of  Villains,"  " Benefits  of  Superstition,"  "The  Death 
less  Diary,"  "The  Accursed  Annual,"  "Marriage  in  Fiction," 
and  all  other  topics  pertinent  to  Dr.  Johnson's  little  world.  She 
adds  not  much  to  our  knowledge,  and  she  comes  not  often  to 
any  new  conclusions,  but  she  is  so  companionable,  so  sparkling 
and  witty,  that  we  can  but  read  on  with  delight  to  the  end.  We 
are  in  an  atmosphere  somehow  of  old  culture  and  patrician 
grace,  of  courtliness  and  charm: 

Thou  mindest  me  of  gentle  folks — 

Old  gentlefolks  are  they — 
Thou  sayst  an  undisputed  thing 

In  such  a  solemn  way. 

A  little  of  feminine  contrariness  there  may  be,  perhaps,  at 
times.  A  thing  has  been  generally  disparaged:  she  will  defend 
it.  Richardson's  Sir  Charles  Grandison  may  be  mentioned: 
"I  think,  myself,  that  poor  Sir  Charles  has  been  unfairly  han 
dled,"  she  will  retort.  "He  is  not  half  such  a  prig  as  Daniel 
Deronda;  but  he  develops  his  priggishness  with  such  ample  de 
tail  through  so  many  leisurely  volumes."  And  her  protest 
becomes  almost  acrimonious  if  anything  of  the  new  be  flippantly 
boasted  of  as  superior  to  the  old: 

"We  have  long  ago  ceased  to  be  either  surprised,  grieved,  or  indig 
nant  at  anything  the  English  say  of  us,"  writes  Mr.  Charles  Dudley 
Warner.  "We  have  recovered  our  balance.  We  know  that  since  Gul 
liver  there  has  been  no  piece  of  original  humor  produced  in  England 
equal  to  Knickerbocker's  New  York;  that  not  in  this  century  has  any 
English  writer  equaled  the  wit  and  satire  of  the  Biglow  Papers." 

Does  this  mean  that  Mr.  Warner  considers  Washington  Irving  to  be 
the  equal  of  Jonathan  Swift;  that  he  places  the  gentle  satire  of  the 
American  alongside  of  those  trenchant  and  masterly  pages  which  con 
stitute  the  landmarks  of  literature?  "Swift,"  says  Dr.  Johnson,  with 
reluctant  truthfulness,  "must  be  allowed  for  a  time  to  have  dictated  the 


430  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

political  opinions  of  the  English  nation."  He  is  a  writer  whom  we 
may  be  permitted  to  detest,  but  not  to  undervalue.  His  star,  red  as 
Mars,  still  flames  fiercely  in  the  horizon,  while  the  genial  luster  of 
Washington  Irving  grows  dimmer  year  by  year.  Wr  can  never  hope 
to  "recover  our  balance"  by  confounding  values,  a  process  of  self- 
deception  which  misleads  no  one  but  ourselves. 

Realism,  the  new  smartness  of  Western  veritism,  the  cry  that 
romance  is  dead,  and  that  Walter  Scott  is  outworn,  found  in  her 
no  sympathy.  Her  heart  was  in  the  eighteenth  century  rather 
than  in  what  she  has  called  "this  overestimated  century  of  prog 
ress.  "  And  so  thoroughly  convinced  is  she,  it  is  impossible  not 
to  agree  with  her: 

Lord  Holland,  when  asked  by  Murray  for  his  opinion  of  Old  Mor- 
talitii,  answered  indignantly:  "Opinion?  We  did  not  one  of  us  go  to 
bed  last  night !  Nothing'  slept  but  my  gout."  Yet  Rokeby  and  Childe 
Harold  are  both  in  sad  disgrace  with  modern  critics  and  Old  Mortality 
stands  gathering  dust  on  our  book-shelves.  .  .  .  We  read  The  Bos- 
tonians  and  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham  with  a  due  appreciation  of  their 
minute  perfections;  but  we  go  to  bed  quite  cheerfully  at  our  usual 
hour,  and  are  content  to  wait  an  interval  of  leisure  to  resume  them. 
Could  Daisy  Miller  charm  a  gouty  leg,  or  Lemuel  Barker  keep  us  awake 
till  morning? 

A  paragraph  like  this  may  be  said  to  contain  all  the  various 
elements  of  her  style: 

There  are  few  things  more  wearisome  in  a  fairly  fatiguing  life  than 
the  monotonous  repetition  of  a  phrase  which  catches  and  holds  the 
public  fancy  by  virtue  of  its  total  lack  of  significance.  Such  a  phrase 
— employed  with  tireless  irrelevance  in  journalism,  and  creeping  into 
the  pages  of  what  is,  by  courtesy,  called  literature — is  the  "new 
woman."  It  has  furnished  inexhaustible  jests  to  Life  and  Punch,  and 
it  has  been  received  with  all  seriousness  by  those  who  read  the  present 
with  no  light  from  the  past,  and  so  fail  to  perceive  that  all  femininity 
is  as  old  as  Lilith,  and  that  the  variations  of  the  type  began  when  Eve 
arrived  in  the  Garden  of  Paradise  to  dispute  the  claims  of  her  prede 
cessor.  "If  the  fifteenth  century  discovered  America,"  says  a  vehement 
advocate  of  female  progress,  uit  was  reserved  for  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  to  discover  woman";  and  this  remarkable  statement  has  been 
gratefully  applauded  by  people  who  have  apparently  forgotten  all 
about  Judith  and  Zenobia,  Cleopatra  and  Catherine  de  Medici,  Saint 
Theresa  and  Jeanne  d'Arc,  Catherine  of  Russia  and  Elizabeth  of  Eng 
land,  who  played  parts  of  some  importance,  for  good  and  ill,  in  the 
fortunes  of  the  world. 

Here  is  the  note  of  dissent  from  the  widely  accepted ;  the  appeal 


THE  ESSAYISTS  431 

to  antiquity;  the  pithy  quotation;  the  allusion  that  takes  for 
granted  a  cultivated  reader ;  the  sprightly  tripping  of  sentences ; 
the  witty  turn;  and  the  atmosphere  of  feminine  vivacity  and 
brilliance.  Apt  quotations  sparkle  from  every  paragraph. 
Often  she  opens  breezily  with  a  quotation;  she  illustrates  at 
every  point  with  epigrams  and  witty  sayings  from  all  known 
and  unknown  sources;  and  she  ends  smartly  by  snapping  the 
whip  of  a  quotation  in  the  final  sentence  or  paragraph. 

The  bent  of  her  work,  taking  it  all  in  all,  is  critical,  and  often 
in  her  criticism,  especially  her  criticism  of  literature,  she  rises 
to  the  point  of  distinction.  One  may  quote  paragraphs  here 
and  there  that  are  as  illuminating  as  anything  in  American 
criticism.  She  is  quick  to  see  fallacies  and  to  press  an  absurd 
deduction  to  its  ridiculous  end.  She  illumines  a  whole  subject 
with  a  paragraph.  This  for  example  on  Hamlin  Garland: 

Mr.  Hamlin  Garland,  whose  leaden-hned  sketches  called — I  think 
unfairly — Main-Traveled  Roads  have  deprived  most  of  us  of  some 
cheerful  hours,  paints  with  an  unfaltering  hand  a  life  in  which  ennui 
sits  enthroned.  It  is  not  the  poverty  of  his  Western  farmers  that 
oppresses  us.  Real  biting  poverty,  which  withers  lesser  evils  with  its 
deadly  breath,  is  not  known  to  these  people  at  all.  They  have  roofs, 
fire,  food,  and  clothing.  It  is  not  the  ceaseless  labor,  the  rough  fare, 
the  gray  skies,  the  muddy  barn-yards,  which  stand  for  the  trouble  in 
their  lives.  It  is  the  dreadful  weariness  of  living.  It  is  the  burden 
of  a  dull  existence,  clogged  at  every  pore,  and  the  hopeless  melancholy 
of  which  they  have  sufficient  intelligence  to  understand.  Theirs  is  the 
ennui  of  emptiness,  and  the  implied  reproach  on  every  page  is  that 
a  portion,  and  only  a  portion,  of  mankind  is  doomed  to  walk  along 
these  shaded  paths;  while  happier  mortals  who  abide  in  New  York,  or 
perhaps  in  Paris,  spend  their  days  in  a  pleasant  tumult  of  intellectual 
and  artistic  excitation. 

And  few  have  put  their  criticism  into  more  attractive  form.  It 
is  penetrating  and  true  and  in  addition  it  has  a  sparkle  and  wit 
about  it  that  makes  it  anything  but  dry  reading.  Who  has 
written  more  sympathetically,  more  understandingly,  more  de 
lightfully  about  Charles  Lamb  than  she  if  one  takes  her  work 
all  together.  Here  is  a  glimpse,  yet  how  illuminating: 

Truest  of  all,  is  Charles  Lamb  who,  more  than  any  other  humorist, 
more  than  any  other  man  of  letters,  belongs  exclusively  to  his  own 
land,  and  is  without  trace  or  echo  of  foreign  influence.  France  was 
to  Lamb,  not  a  place  where  the  finest  prose  is  written,  but  a  place 
where  he  ate  frogs — "the  nicest  little  delicate  things — rabbity-flavored. 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Imagine  a  Lilliputian  rabbit."  Germany  was  little  or  nothing,  and 
America  was  less.  The  child  of  London  streets, 

"Mother  of  mightier,  nurse  of  none  more  dear," 

rich  in  the  splendid  literature  of  England,  and  faithful  lover  both  of 
the  teeming  city  and  the  ripe  old  books.  Lamb  speaks  to  English  hearts 
in  a  language  they  can  understand.  And  we,  his  neighbors,  whom  he 
recked  not  of,  hold  him  just  as  dear:  for  his  spleen  less  humor  is  an 
inheritance  of  our  mother  tongue,  one  of  the  munificent  gifts  which 
England  shares  with  us,  and  for  which  no  payment  is  possible  save 
the  frank  and  generous  recognition  of  a  pleasure  that  is  without  a 
peer. 

But  critic  in  the  sense  that  Paul  Elmer  More  is  a  critic,  she 
certainly  is  not.  She  is  temperamental  rather  than  scientific. 
She  makes  brilliant  observations,  but  she  has  no  system,  no 
patient  analytical  processes.  She  is,  like  Henry  James,  a  critic 
by  flashes,  but  those  flashes  often  illuminate  the  whole  landscape. 

She  is  a  suggestive  writer,  a  writer  who  makes  her  reader 
think,  who  restores  him  as  the  dynamo  restores  the  battery. 
Her  world  is  a  small  one  and  it  is  not  necessarily  American,  but 
it  is  intensely  alive.  In  her  own  "happy  half  century,"  quoting 
Dr.  Johnson,  discoursing  of  Fanny  Burney  or  Hannah  More, 
or  when  telling  of  her  cat  or  of  the  mystic  lore  of  cats  quoting 
Montaigne  and  Loti,  or  of  those  still  more  feminine  topics: 
mirrors,  spinsters,  letters,  the  eternal  feminine,  she  induces 
4 'electrical  tingles  of  hit  after  hit."  Her  work  must  be  classed 
with  that  of  Lamb,  of  Loti,  of  Hearn,  as  work  peculiarly  per 
sonal,  work  that  makes  its  appeal  largely  on  account  of  the 
surcharged  individuality  behind  it. 

With  Miss  Repplier's  essays  may  be  classed  those  of  Samuel 

McChord  Crothers  (1857 ),  Edward  S.  Martin  (1856 ) 

and  Louise  Imogen  Guiney,  who  wrote  for  cultured  people  on 
topics  for  the  most  part  drawn  from  the  world  of  books.  The 
work  of  Dr.  Crothers  is  the  most  distinctive  of  the  three.  His 
wisdom,  his  delicate  humor,  his  unfailing  sense  of  values  have 
made  his  papers,  the  most  of  them  published  in  the  Atlantic,  a 
source  of  real  delight  and  profit  to  an  increasing  circle.  His 
books,  like  those  of  Miss  Repplier,  may  be  safely  placed  in  the 
trunk  when  one  starts  on  his  summer's  vacation  and  can  take 
but  few.  They  are  wise,  still  books  that  one  may  live  with. 


THE  ESSAYISTS  433 

IV 

The  period  has  abounded  in  critics  from  the  first.  The  best 
of  Lowell's  prose  came  in  the  years  following  the  war,  and  all 
of  Stedman's  was  written  after  1870.  The  great  multiplication 
of  newspapers  and  the  increasing  number  of  magazines  led  more 
and  more  to  the  production  of  book  reviews.  The  North  Ameri 
can  Review  no  longer  said  the  last  word  about  a  book  or  an 
author.  In  1865  Edwin  L.  Godkin  (1831-1902)  founded  the 
New  York  Nation  and  contributed  to  it  some  of  the  most  fearless 
and  discriminating  work  of  the  period;  in  1880  Francis  F. 
Browne  (1843-1913)  founded  the  Chicago  Dial  and  made  its 
reviews  among  the  best  in  America;  and  in  1881  Jeannette  L. 

Gilder  ( 1849-1916)  and  her  brother,  Joseph  B.  Gilder  (1858 ), 

established  the  New  York  Critic,  a  journal  that  for  two  decades 
exerted  a  formative  influence  upon  the  period. 

A  few  of  the  great  numbers  of  book  reviewers  have  done 
worthy  work,  some  of  them  even  distinctive  work,  though  most 
of  it  lies  buried  now  in  the  great  ephemeral  mass.  Howells  and 
Aldrich,  Horace  E.  Scudder  (1838-1902)  and  Bliss  Perry 

(I860 )  in  the  Atlantic,  Henry  M.  Alden  (1836 )  in 

Harper's,  Maurice  Thompson  (1844—1901)  in  the  Independent, 
and  Hamilton  W.  Mabie  (1846-1916)  in  the  Outlook,  all  did  work 
that  undoubtedly  helped  to  shape  the  period,  but  not  much  of 
it  may  rank  as  permanent  literature.  It  has  been  too  often 
journalistic:  hastily  prepared,  a  thing  of  the  day's  work. 

Much  fine  criticism  has  come  sporadically  from  pens  conse 
crated  to  other  literary  tasks.  Nearly  all  of  the  major  poets  of 
the  period  as  well  as  the  novelists  and  essayists  have  at  one 
time  or  another  made  excursions  into  the  field,  sometimes  pro 
ducing  only  a  brilliant  bit  of  temperamental  impressionism, 
sometimes  working  out  studies  that  are  systematic  and  complete. 
James,  Howells;  Whitman,  Burroughs,  Lanier,  Crawford,  Tor^ 
rey,  John  Fiske,  Maurice  F.  Egan,  Henry  Van  Dyke,  George  E. 
Woodberry,  James  Brander  Matthews  have  all  added  brilliant 
chapters  to  the  sum  of  American  criticism,  but  none  may  be 
called  a  critic  in  the  sense  Sainte-Beuve  was  a  critic.  Their 
work  has  been  avocational,  fitful  excursions  rather  than  sys 
tematic  exploration. 

During  the  later  years  of  the  period  there  has  been  but  one 
who  may  be  called  a  critic  in  the  broader  sense  of  the  term — • 


434  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

scholarly,  leisurely  of  method,  systematic,  detached,  literary  in 
style  and  finish — a  critic  and  only  a  critic,  Paul  Elmer  More, 
\\hosr  Shilhurnc  Essays  are  our  nearest  approach  to  those 
Can  i  I. a n'ii  of  an  earlier  age.  His  birth  and  education 

in  the  West,  in  St.  Louis,  was  an  advantage  at  the  start :  it  took 
from  his  later  criticism  that  New  England-centered  point  of 
view  that  is  so  evident  in  the  work  of  critics  like  Richardson 
and  Barrett  Wendell.  The  New  England  culture  he  got  in 
due  time  at  Harvard,  where  he  took  two  advanced  degrees,  and 
he  broadened  his  outlook  still  further  by  pursuing  his  studies  in 
European  universities,  returning  at  length  to  teach  Sanscrit 
at  Harvard  and  later  at  Bryn  Mawr.  Oriental  language  was 
his  specialty.  One  catches  the  spirit  of  his  earlier  period  by 
examining  his  first  publications,  among  them  A  Century  of 
•i/i  Kjiiyram,  "Translations  or  paraphrases  in  English  verse 
of  a  hundred  epigrams  and  precepts  ascribed  to  a  Hindu  sage." 
This  oarly  enthusiasm  for  things  oriental  gave  him  a  singularly 
valuable  equipment  for  criticism.  It  broadened  his  view:  it 
put  into  his  hands  the  two  opposite  poles  of  human  thought. 
His  essay  on  Lafcadio  Hearn  is  illuminating,  not  only  of  Hearn 
but  of  More  himself.  We  can  illustrate  only  lamely  with  frag 
ments  : 

Into  the  study  of  these  by-ways  of  Oriental  literature  he  has  carried 
a  third  element,  the  dominant  idea  of  Occidental  science;  and  this  ele 
ment  he  has  blended  with  Hindu  religion  and  Japanese  aBstheticism  in 
a  combination  as  bewildering  as  it  is  voluptuous.  In  this  triple  union 
lies  his  real  claim  to  high  originality.  .  .  . 

Beauty  itself,  which  forms  the  essence  of  Mr.  Hearn's  art,  receives 
a  new  content  from  this  union  of  the  East  and  the  West.  .  .  . 

Is  it  not  proper  to  say,  after  reading  such  passages  as  these,  that 
Mr.  Hearn  has  introduced  a  new  element  of  psychology  into  literature? 
We  are  indeed  living  in  the  past,  we  who  foolishly  cry  out  that  the 
past  is  dead.  In  one  remarkable  study  of  the  emotions  awakened  by 
the  baying  of  a  gaunt  white  hound,  Mr.  Hearn  shows  how  even  the 
very  beasts  whom  we  despise  as  unreasoning  and  unremembering  are 
filled  with  an  articulate  sense  of  this  dark  backward  and  abysm  of 
time,  whose  shadow  falls  on  their  sensitive  souls  with  the  chill  of  a 
vague  dread — dread,  I  say,  for  it  must  begin  to  be  evident  that  this 
new  psychology  is  fraught  with  meanings  that  may  well  trouble  and 
awe  the  student. 

In  the  ghostly  residuum  of  these  psychological  meditations  we  may 
perceive  a  vision  dimly  foreshadowing  itself  which  mankind  for  cen 
turies,  nay,  for  thousands  of  years,  has  striven  half  unwittingly  to 


THE  ESSAYISTS  435 

keep  veiled.  I  do  not  know,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  foreboding 
of  this  dreaded  disclosure  may  account  for  many  things  in  the  obscure 
history  of  the  race,  for  the  long  struggle  of  religion  against  the  ob 
servations  of  science  which  to-day  we  are  wont  to  slur  over  as  only 
a  superficial  struggle  after  all.  In  the  haunting  fear  of  this  dis 
closure  I  seem  to  see  an  explanation,  if  not  a  justification,  of  the 
obscurantism  of  the  early  church,  of  the  bitter  feud  of  Galileo  and  the 
burning  of  Giordano  Bruno,  of  the  recent  hostility  to  Darwinism,  and 
even  of  the  present-day  attempt  to  invalidate  the  significance  of  this 
long  contest.1 

In  another  and  a  far  more  unusual  way  he  qualified  himself 
for  his  high  office  of  critic:  he  immured  himself  for  two  years 
in  solitude,  with  books  as  his  chief  companions,  and  it  was  in 
this  wilderness  that  the  Shelburne  Essays — Shelburne  was  the 
name  of  the  town  of  his  hermitage — were  born.  His  own  ac 
count  is  illuminating: 

In  a  secluded  spot  in  the  peaceful  valley  of  the  Androscoggin  I  took 
upon  myself  to  live  two  years  as  a  hermit,  after  a  mild  Epicurean 
fashion  of  my  own.  Three  maiden  aunts  wagged  their  heads  omi 
nously;  my  nearest  friend  inquired  cautiously  whether  there  was  any 
taint  of  insanity  in  the  family;  an  old  gray-haired  lady,  a  veritable 
saint,  who  had  not  been  soured  by  her  many  deeds  of  charity,  admon 
ished  me  on  the  utter  selfishness  and  godlessness  of  such  a  proceed 
ing.  ...  As  for  the  hermit  .  .  .  having  found  it  impossible  to  educe 
any  meaning  from  the  tangled  habits  of  mankind  while  he  himself 
was  whirled  about  in  the  imbroglio,  he  had  determined  to  try  the  effi 
ciency  of  undisturbed  meditation  at  a  distance.  So  deficient  had  been 
his  education  that  he  was  actually  better  acquainted  with  the  aspira 
tions  and  emotions  of  the  old  dwellers  on  the  Ganges  than  with  those 
of  the  modern  toilers  by  the  Hudson  or  the  Potomac.  He  had  been 
deafened  by  the  "Indistinguishable  roar"  of  the  streets,  and  could  make 
no  sense  of  the  noisy  jargon  of  the  market  place.2 

The  period  gave  him  time  to  read,  leisurely,  thoughtfully, 
with  no  nervous  subconsciousness  that  the  product  of  that  read 
ing  was  to  be  marketable.  When  he  wrote  his  first  papers  he 
wrote  with  no  press  of  need  upon  him.  He  had  evolved  his  own 
notion  of  the  function  of  literature  and  of  the  critic.  This  was 
what  he  evolved :  and  it  is  worthy  of  study : 

There  is  a  kind  of  criticism  that  limits  itself  to  looking  at  the  thing 
in  itself,  or  at  the  parts  of  a  thing  as  they  successively  strike  the  mind. 

1  Shelburne  Essays,  Second  Series. 

2  "A  Hermit's  Note  on  Thoreau."     Shelburne  Essays,  First  Series. 


436  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

This  is  properly  the  way  of  sympathy,  and  those  who  choose  this  way 
are  right  in  saying  that  it  is  absurd  or  merely  ill-tempered  to  dwell  on 
what  is  ugly  in  a  work  of  art,  or  false,  or  incomplete.  But  there  is 
a  place  also  for  another  kind  of  criticism,  which  is  not  so  much  di 
rected  to  the  individual  thing  as  to  its  relation  with  other  things,  and 
to  its  place  as  cause  or  effect  in  a  whole  group  of  tendencies.  No 
criticism,  to  be  sure,  can  follow  one  or  the  other  of  these  methods 
exclusively,  as  no  product  of  art  can  ever  be  entirely  isolated  in  its 
genesis  or  altogether  merged  in  the  current  of  the  day.  The  highest 
criticism  would  contrive  to  balance  these  methods  in  such  manner  that 
neither  the  occasional  merits  of  a  work  nor  its  general  influence  would 
be  unduly  subordinated,  and  in  so  far  as  these  essays  fail  to  strike 
such  a  balance — I  wish  this  were  their  only  failure — they  err  sadly  from 
the  best  model.8 

In  the  eight  volumes  now  issued  there  are  eighty-five  essays 
on  topics  as  varied  as  George  Crabbe,  Hawthorne,  Swinburne, 
Walt  Whitman,  The  Bhagavad  Gita,  Pascal,  Plato,  Nietzsche. 
Nearly  two-thirds  of  them  all  deal  with  representative  English 
writers;  some  fifteen  have  to  do  with  Americans.  In  the  criti 
cizing  of  them  he  has  held  steadfastly  to  the  contention  that 
men  of  letters  are  to  be  viewed  not  alone  as  individuals  but  as 
voices  and  as  spiritual  leaders  in  their  generations.  The  soul 
of  literature  is  not  art  and  it  is  not  alone  beauty.  For  decadents 
like  Swinburne  he  has  small  sympathy  and  he  can  even  rebuke 
Charles  Lamb  for  "his  persistent  refusal  to  face,  in  words  at 
least,  the  graver  issues  of  life."  He  takes  his  stand  at  a  point 
so  elevated  that  only  the  great  masters  who  have  been  the  origi 
nal  voices  of  the  race  are  audible.  He  dares  even  to  speak  of 
"the  jaunty  optimism  of  Emerson,"  and  to  suggest  that  his 
confidence  and  serenity  were  all  too  often  taken  by  his  genera 
tion  for  original  wisdom. 

The  foundation  of  his  work  is  religious — religious  in  the 
fundamental,  the  oriental,  sense  of  the  word.  He  has  been  con 
sistent  and  he  has  been  courageous.  That  America  has  a  critic 
with  standards  of  criticism,  an  official  critic  in  the  sense  that 
Sainte-Beuve  was  official,  and  that  as  editor  of  the  leading  criti 
cal  review  of  America  this  critic  has  a  dominating  clientele  and 
a  leader's  authority,  is  one  of  the  most  promising  signs  for  that 
new  literary  era  which  already  is  overdue. 

3  Shclburne  Essays,  Eighth  Series.     Preface. 


THE  ESSAYISTS  437 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Mark  Twain],  1873;  Baddeck,  and  That  Sort  of  Thing,  1874;  My  Winter 
on  the  Nile  Among  the  Mummies  and  Moslems,  1876;  In  the  Levant,  1877; 
Being  a  Boy,  1877;  In  the  Wilderness,  1878;  Washington  Irving,  1881; 
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South  and  West,  with  Comments  on  Canada,  1889;  A  Little  Journey  in 
the  World:  a  Novel,  1889;  Our  Italy,  1891;  As  We  Were  Saying,  1891; 
As  We  Go,  1894;  The  Golden  House,  1895;  The  People  for  Whom  Shake 
speare  Wrote,  1897;  The  Relation  of  Literature  to  Life,  1897;  That  For 
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Warner,  by  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields,  1904. 

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Gombo  Zhebes,  1885;  Some  Chinese  Ghosts,  1887;  Chita:  a  Memory  of  Last 
Island,  1889;  Two  Years  in  the  French  West  Indies,  1890;  Youma:  the 
Story  of  a  West  Indian  Slave,  1890;  Glimpses  of  Unfamiliar  Japan,  1894; 
Out  of  the  East:  Reveries  and  Studies  in  New  Japan,  1895;  Kokoro:  Hints 
and  Echoes  of  Japanese  Inner  Life,  1896;  Gleanings  in  Buddha-fields : 
Studies  of  Hand  and  Soul  in  the  Far  East,  1897 ;  Exotics  and  Retro 
spectives,  1899;  In  Ghostly  Japan,  1899;  Shadowings,  1900;  Japanese 
Miscellany,  1901;  Kotto:  Being  Japanese  Curios  with  Sundry  Cobwebs, 
1902;  Japanese  Fairy  Tales,  1903;  Kwaidan,  1904;  Japan:  an  Attempt  at 
Interpretation,  1904;  The  Romance  of  the  Milky  Way  and  Other  Studies, 
1905;  Letters  from  the  Raven:  the  Correspondence  of  Lafcadio  Hearn 
with  Henry  Watkin,  1905,  1907;  Life  and  Letters  of  Lafcadio  Hearn,  2 
vols.,  by  Elizabeth  Bisland,  1906;  Concerning  Lafcadio  Hearn,  with  a  Bib 
liography  by  Laura  Stedman,  by  G.  M.  Gould,  1908;  Japanese  Letters  of 
Lafcadio  Hearn,  edited  by  Elizabeth  Bisland,  1910;  Leaves  from  the  Diary 
of  an  Impressionist:  Early  Writings;  with  an  Introduction  by  Ferris 
Greenslet,  1911;  Lafcadio  Hearn  in  Japan,  by  Y.  Noguchi,  1911;  Lafcadio 
Hearn,  by  N.  H.  Kennard,  1912;  Lafcadio  Hearn,  by  E.  Thomas,  1912; 
Fantastics  and  Other  Fancies,  with  an  Introduction  by  Dr.  Charles  W< 
Hutson,  1914. 

AGNES  REPPLIER.     (1857 .)     Books  and  Men,  1888;  Points  of  View, 

1891;  Essays  in  Miniature,  1892;  Essays  in  Idleness,  1893;  In  the  Dozy 
Hours  and  Other  Papers,  1894;  Varia,  1897;  Philadelphia,  the  Place  and 
the  People,  1898;  The  Fireside  Sphinx,  1901;  Compromises,  1904;  In  Our 
Convent  Days,  1905 ;  A  Happy  Half  Century,  1908 ;  Americans  and  Others, 
1912;  The  Cat,  1912. 

PAUL  ELMER  MORE.     (1864 .)      Helena,  and  Occasional  Poems,  1890; 

The  Great  Refusal:  Letters  of  a  Dreamer  in  Gotham,  1894;  A  Century  of 


438  AMERICAN  LITERATURE  SINCE  1870 

Indian  Fpinrams;  Chiefly  from  the  Sanscrit  of  Bhartrihari,  1898;  Shel- 
burne  Essays,  First  series,  1904;  Second  and  Third  series,  1905;  Fourth 
s.-ri.-s.  1906;  Fifth  series,  1008;  Sixth  series,  1909;  Seventh  series,  1910; 
Eighth  series,  1913;  Xietzsche,  1912. 


INDEX 


TNDKX 


Abbott,  C.  C.,   100,   1«1. 
Addison,   Joseph,  23. 
"Adler,    Max,"    H<-e    II.    C.    Clark. 
Agassi/,   Louis,    12. 
/lir«   /row    A  ready,    322,   334. 
Alrott,   Bronson,    187,  350. 
Alcott,    Louisa   M.,   03,   220,   221. 
Alden,   Henry  M.,  300,  433. 
Aldrioh,    Ann*-    Reeve,    338. 
Aldrich,  ThomaB  Bailey,   10,  10,  21, 

24,   51,    03,    00,    Si),    I  J!J,    120    135, 

142,   180,  231,  309. 
Alice  of  Old   Vincennea,  202,  404. 
Allen,  Kli/abeth   Akers,  220,   338. 
Allen,    James    Lane,     15,     IS,    305, 

382. 

Amber  Oods,  The,  225. 
American,    The,    192,    194. 
American  Anthology,  An,   120,  321. 
American    Men    of    Letters    Heriett, 

419. 

A  mony   the   Inles  of  Hhoalit,   340. 
Andover    Movement,    228. 
Aritbon,    Charles,    350. 
"Arp,  Bill,"  »ee  Smith,  C.  H. 
Artemus  Ward,  see  Browne,  C.  F. 
Atherton,   Gertrude,  410. 
Atlantic    Monthly,   21,   04,   74,    114, 

120,   133,  204,  200,  227,  335,  372. 
AuHtin,  Jane  G.,  220. 


Backlog  Ntudie*,  419. 

Bailey,  Florence  M.,  161. 

Bailey,     James     Montgomery,     26, 

32. 

Balcony  Stories,  363. 
Balestier,  Wolcott,  397. 
Baldwin,  Joseph  G.,  28,  84. 
Balzac,   13,   192,  238. 
Bancroft,  George,   11. 
Bangs,  John  K.,  43,  335. 
Barnard  College,  350. 
Harriers   Hurned  Away,  387. 
Barus,   Clara,    161. 
Baskerville'8  Southern  Writera,  348. 
Bates,  Katharine  Lee,  341 


Battles    arid    leaders    of    the    Civil 

War,  410. 
Bayou   Folks,  304. 

i<t.<T,    Henry    Ward,   8,   63. 
•llarny,    Kdward,    409,    414. 
:n    llur,    254,    .'5SS,    .'{HO. 
•rinett,    K.   A.,  402. 
.  Jf(,  Amr>roM«,  24,  321,  373,  379, 
383. 

"Billings,   Josh,"   w*   Shaw,    II.    W. 
Binns,  H.  B.,   185. 
Biflaadi    Kli/.ab«:th,   437. 
I 

I  lake,   II.  G.  <).,    138. 
ol:«-r,  r;«-orge    M«-nry,    1  18,    120,  2!^. 
olles,    Frank,    102. 
onwr,    Robert,  208,   3S5. 
oflton,   11,  62,  80,  212. 
outwHI,   G«-org«j   S.,   40. 
owdoiri   College,  232. 
owles,   Samuel,  380. 
oyesen,  H.  II.,  13,  409,  414. 
oynton,    Henry    W.,    82. 
read-v;inner*,  The,  88,  385,  409. 
rontS,  Charlotte,  221,  220. 
rown,  Alice,  24,  220,  221,  240-243, 


•own  University,  88. 


"arrar,  25,  20,  31, 


Francis    F.,  433. 


I 

I 

Bryant,  W.  C.,   10,   12,   19,  66,   118. 

Bucke,  R.  M.,  180. 

Bulwer-Lytton,    180,  224. 
Bunner,  Henry  C.,  22,  24,  290,  322, 
333,    353,    372,    370. 

BurdeUf.    KoU-rt,   Jonen,    20,    32. 

Burr/r-HH,     Gelett,     335 

Burke,  T.  A.,  84. 

Burnett,  Frances  Hodgson,  221,  388, 

411. 

Burnham,    Clara   Tx>uise,    408,    413. 
Burroughs,   John,    18,   21,   22,    111, 

141,  142,  144,  145,  140-154,  155, 
150,  157,  158,  159,  101,  182,  185, 
321. 


441 


442 


INDEX 


But   Yet  a  Woman,  408. 


Cable,   George   W.,    15,    18,   21,   23, 

24,  79,  246-253,  269,  296. 
Callaway,    Morgan,    293. 
Calvert,   13. 

Cape  Cod  Folks,   23,   86. 
( -arl, -ton,  Will,  21,  86,  321-323,  320, 

3.-.  2. 

Carlyle,    Thos.,    275. 
Carman,   Bliss,  354. 
Carp. 'liter,    Edward,    185. 
Carpenter,  George  Rice,  165. 
Carroll,   C.    C.,    293. 
Corn  I.   Hi'lmrd,  410. 
Gary  Sisters,   19 
Castilian  Days,   13,  88,  203. 
Castle  Nowhere,  21,  221,  258. 
Gather  wood,     Mary     Hartwell,     21, 

221,    258-262,   269. 
Cawrin,  Madison,  322,  346-349,  351, 

154. 
(Vntrnnial,  The,   19,   118,   120,  282, 

285. 

Century  of  Dishonor,  A.,  255. 
Century    Magazine,    The,    42,    206, 

207,    342. 

Chambers,  Robert  W.,  410. 
Chance    Acquaintance,    A.,    205. 
Channing,   W.  E.,   11. 
Choir  Invisible,  The,  369. 
Chopin,  Kate,  318,  364-365,  382. 
(•linn-hill.  Winston,  403,  410. 
Circuit  Rider,  The,  93,  95. 
Clark,   Charles  Heber,   26. 
Clark,   G.    H.,   293. 
Clarke,   James   Freeman,    11. 
Civil  WTar,  3,  14,  18,  21,  25,  26,  40, 

116,   137. 

Clemens,  John,  46. 
Clemens,  Samuel  Langhorne,  6,   11, 

18,  23,  24,  26,  31,  33,  45-62,  65, 

76,  86,  91,  99,  112,  113,  142,  178, 

191,    195,  217,  418. 
Cleveland,    Grover,    404. 
Clough,   Arthur  Hugh,  344. 
Cobb,  Sylvanus,  217. 
Collins,  Wilkie,  64. 
Colonel  Carter  of  Cartersrille,  269. 
Cone,    Helen    G.,   341. 
Con  way,  Monoure  D.,  71. 
Con  well,   R.   H.,    135. 
Cook,  Rose  Terry,  24,  209,  220,  227, 


228,  229-231,  233,  241,  321,  335, 

372. 

Cooke,  John  Esten,  264,  269. 
Coolbrith,  Ina  Donna,  322,  341. 
Cooper,  J.  F.,   12,  61,  62,  217,  258, 

263. 

Country  Doctor,  A.,  232. 
Countryman,   The,  302. 
"Craddock,     Charles    Egbert,"     see 

Murfree,  Mary  N. 
Craik,    Dinah    Mulock,    64. 
Cranch,  C.  P.,  19. 
Crane,    Stephen,   397,   412. 
Crawford,  F.  Marion,  381,  389-393, 

411. 

Crisis,    The,   403. 
Critic,   The,   366,   433. 
Crothers,  Samuel  M.,  432. 
Crumbling  Idols,   373,   396,  401. 
Curtis,  G.  W.,  8,  12,  417,  418. 

Daisy   Miller,    192. 

Dana,    C.    A.,    330,    333. 

Dana,   R.   H.,    11,   417. 

"Danbury  News  Man,"   see   Bailey, 

J.  M. 

Danbury    News,    32. 
Dartmouth  College,  344,  351. 
Dartmouth  Magazine,  350. 
Daudet,   192. 
David  Harum,   389. 
Davis,    R.    H.,    372,    373,    380,    383, 

397. 

Day,  Holman   F.,  86,  410. 
Deephaven,   21,   86,    220,    355. 
Deland,     Margaretta     Wade,     221, 

335,   373,    389,    394-396,   411. 
Deming,    Philander,    24,    379,    383. 
Densmore,   Gilbert,  51. 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  421,  426,  427. 
Derby,  George  Horatio,  28,  29,   30, 

43. 

Dial,   The,   433. 
Dialect,    16,    266,    306. 
Dickens,  Charles,  8,  23,  25,  35,  64, 

71,  72,  73,  76,  77,  92,  95,  98,  186. 
Dickinson,    Emily,    220,    322,    340- 

341,  344. 
Disraeli,  224. 
Doctor  Johns,  63. 
Dr.  Sevier,  251. 
I  >..(!•:<',   Mary    Abigail,   220. 
Dodge,   Mary   Mapes,   335. 
Donaldson,  T.,  185. 


INDEX 


443 


Drum-Taps,   172,    174. 
Drummond,  Dr.,  22,  86,  328. 
Dukesborough   Tales,  294,  295,   300, 

307. 
Durket  Sperrit,  The,  316. 

East  and  West  Poems,  85. 
Easy    Chair,    The,    210,    418. 
Eddy,  Mary  Baker  G.,   167. 
Edwards,   Harry   S.,   298,   317,   320. 
Egan,    Maurice    F.,    345,    433. 
Eggleston,   Edward,    15,    18,  21,  23, 

92-95,    295,    301. 

Eggleston,  George  Gary,  98,  385. 
Eliot,    George,    186,    190,    192,    284, 

309. 

Elliott,    Sarah   B.,   316,   320. 
Emerson,    Ralph    Waldo,    5,    8,    11, 

12,   13,   19,  21,  30,   118,  138,   142, 

153,  159,  169,  172,  176,  177,  186. 
Europeans,    The,    192. 
Everett,  Edward,   11,   14. 

Fair  God,  The,  21,  388. 
Fearful  Responsibility,  A.t  202. 
Field,  Eugene,  22,  86,  322,  325,  329- 

333,   353. 

Field,  Roswell  M.,  353. 
Fields,  James  T.,  342,   387. 
Fields,  Mrs.  James  T.,  235,  243. 
Fielding,  Henry,    195. 
Fiske,    John,    433. 
Fiske,  Nathan   W.,   254. 
Flagg,  Wilson,  144. 
Flaubert,  235,  248. 
Flute  and  Violin,  355,  366,  367. 
Flush    Times,    28,    84. 
Foote,  Mary  Hallock,  221,  307,  407, 

413. 
Ford,     Paul     Leicester,     402,     403, 

404,    412. 
Foregone   Conclusion,   A.,   202,   205, 

208. 

Foss,  Sam  Walter,  86,  328. 
Fox,   John,    Jr.,    319,   410. 
Frederic,    Harold,     397,    401,     402, 

412. 
Freeman,  Mary  E.  Wilkins,  18,  24, 

202,   220,   221,   235-240,   321,   335, 

376. 

Fremont,  John  C.,   100. 
French,    Alice,     15,    24,    221,    278, 

307,  372,  373,  377-379,  383. 
Freneau,  Philip,  121. 


Frost,  A.  B.,  304. 

Fuller,  Henry  B.,  409,  415. 

Fuller,    Margaret,    11,   221. 

Gabriel   Conroy,  69,  80,  246. 
Garland,  Hamlin,  24,  106,  307,  321, 

372,  373-377,  383,  400,  431. 
Gates  Ajar,  63,  220,  222. 
Gayarre",  Charles,  363. 
Georgia,  274,  297. 
Georgia  Scenes,  28,  84,  264,  297. 
Gibson,  William  H.,   160. 
Gilder,  Jeanette  B.,  433. 
Gilder,  Joseph  B.,  433. 
Gilder,    R.    W.,    18,    21,    290,    300, 

321,  342-343,  353. 
Gildersleeve,  Basil,  275. 
Gettysburg,    14. 
Glasgow,  Ellen,  319,  410. 
Godey's  Lady's  Book,   20. 
Godkin,  Edwin  L.,  433. 
Goodale,  Dora  Read,  341. 
Gordon,  Armistead  C.,  266,  290. 
Gordon,  John  B.,  297. 
Gosse,  Edmund,  334,  345. 
Gould,  George  M.,   136,  437. 
Grady,    Henry    W.,    297. 
Grandissimes,  The,  249. 
Grant,   Robert,   409,   414. 
Grant,  U.  S.,  41,  416. 
Graysons,   The,   95,   98. 
Greeley,  Horace,  12. 
Greenslet,    Ferris,    136,   437. 
Griswold,  Rufus,  8. 
Guardian   Angel,   The,   63. 
Guenn,  408. 

Guilded  Age,  The,  59,  61,  418. 
Guiney,  Louise  L,  243,  322,  341. 
Gummere,  F.  B.,   185. 


"H.   H.,"   see  Helen   Hunt  Jackson. 

Habitant  Ballads,   328. 

Hadley,  Professor,   124. 

Hale,   Edward  E.,   11,  299,  357. 

Hamilton   College,   418. 

"Hamilton     Gail,"     see     Mary     A. 

Dodge. 

Hammond,  William  H.,  281. 
Hans    Breitmann    Ballads,    21. 
Hardy,  A.  S.,  408,  414. 
Hardy,   Thomas,   83,    195,   235,   244, 

260,  298,   309,  311,  315,  369. 
Harland,  Henry,  397,  400. 


444 


INDEX 


"Harland,    Marion,"    see    Mary    V. 

Terhune. 

Harned,  T.  B.,  185. 
Harper's     Monthly,     64,     65,     155, 

210,    227,    433. 
Harris,  G.   W.,   15,   18,  24,  28,  83, 

84. 
Harris,  Joel  C.,  250,  290,  291,  296, 

297,  301-306,  319,  321,  372. 
Harte,   F.    I'...   lf>,  18,  21,  23,  24,  29, 

51,    55,    G3-82,    84,    86,    87-90,   91, 

92,  98,  W,   187,  246, 
Harvard    University,    11,    189,    398, 

4:54. 

Hawlfy,    J.    R.,    418. 
Hawthornr,    Nathaniel,    11,    12,    14, 

45,    82,    215,    217,   233,    234,    245, 

357. 

Hawthorne,    Julian,    408,    413. 
Hay,   John,    13,    18,   21,   85,   86,   87, 

8*8,  90,  91,  99,  385,  409,  410. 
llaxgood,    Attic-US   G.,    2!>7. 
Hayne,    Paul    H.,    10,    89,    271-274, 

292. 
Hearn,  Lafcadio,  248,  304,  420-428, 

432,  434,  437. 
Ht-nrth    and    Home,    92,    358,    374, 

386. 

Henley,  W.  E.,  403. 
Henry,  O.,  360,  373,  380. 
Herford,  Oliver,  335. 
Herrick,  Robert,  410. 
Hibbard,  George  A.,  372. 
Higginson,    Thomas    Wentworth,    8, 

11,   63,    138,    144-146,   340,  357. 
Hill,  Benjamin  H.,  297. 
Kingston,  E.  P.,  44. 
Historical  romance,  262,  403. 
Hitchcock,    Ripley,    135. 
Hoar,  Judge,    138. 
Holland,    J.    G.,     10,    16,    85,    163, 

386,    410. 
Holmes.  Oliver  Wendell,  11,  13,   10, 

25,    42,    61,   63,    64,    129,    309. 
Honorable  Peter  Stirling,  The,  404. 
Hoosier  Mosaics,   16,  21,  86. 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster,   The,   21,   86, 

92,   374,   386. 

Hovey,    Richard,    322,   349,   354. 
Howard,   Blanche    Willis,   220,   408, 

414. 

Howe,  Herbert  C.,  102. 
Howe,  Julia  Ward,   163,  390. 
Howells,  William  Dean,   11,   12,   13. 


18,  21,  87,  122,  178,  186,  191, 
197-219,  227,  231,  234,  235,  244, 
309,  323,  347,  348,  372. 

Hurkl,l,,rry  Finn,  59,  308. 

Hugh    Wynne,   403,   404. 

Hugo,  V.,  250. 

Humble   Romance,  A.,  236,  237. 

Hyperion,   112,  277. 

Ibsen,   H.,   244,   373. 
Independent,   The,   95,   114,  433. 
Indian   Summer,   206. 
Innocents  Abroad,   13,  20,  52-56. 
In   Ole    Virginia,   266,   318,   355. 
In    the    Tennessee    Mountains,    86, 

221,  294,   307,  309,   355. 
In    th>-   Wilderness,   160. 
Iron  Woman,  The,  394. 
Irving.    Washington,   8,    12,   25,   29, 

60,  69,   76,  417. 

"J.  S.  of  Dale,"  see  F.  J.  Stimson. 
Jackson,   Helen   Hunt,    18,   21,   220, 

221,  227,  245,  254-258,  267,  269, 

336. 
James,  Henry,  Jr.,  21,  186-197,  199, 

201,  207,  208,  209,  211,  213,  215, 

307,   381. 

James,  Henry,  Sr.,  186-187,  193. 
Janice  Meredith,  403,  404. 
Janvier,   Thomas   A.,   372. 
Jewett,  Sarah  Orne,  18,  21,  24,  220, 

221,  228,  231-235,  238,  241,   353, 
"Johnson,  Benj.  F.,"  see  J.  W.  Ri- 

ley. 

Johnson,    Robert   U.,   290. 
Johnston,  Mary,  319,  403,  410. 
Johnston,   Richard  M.,  21,  24,  295, 

297,  299-301,  319. 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  282. 
John  Ward,  Preacher,  389,  394. 
"Josh  Billings,"  see  H.  W.  Shaw. 
Judge,  43. 

Keats,  John,   10,   119,   120. 
Kendall,  W.  S.,  51. 
Kentucky  Cardinal,  A.,  367,  368. 
Kennedy,  John  P.,  263. 
"Kerr,  Orpheus  C.,"  see  R.  H.  New 
ell. 

King,    Clarence,    188. 
Kjng,   Edward,  247,  265. 

T,  General  Charles,  407,  413. 


INDEX 


445 


King,    Grace,    24,    221,    318,     362- 

364,    382,    428. 
Kingsley,    Charles,    186. 
Kipling,     Rudyard,     79,     307,     389, 

397. 

Kirkland,   Joseph,  374. 
Knitters  in  the  Sun,  221,  307,  378. 
KJIOX  College,  329. 

Lady   of   the  Aroostook,    The,    210, 

213. 

Lady  of  Fort  St.  John,  261. 
Lady,  or  the   Tiger,  The,  359. 
Lamplighter,  The,   254. 
Landon,  Melvin  D.,  26,  32,  44. 
Landor,  W.   S.,   124,    153. 
Lane,  T.    W.,   84. 
Lanier,  Clifford,  279. 
Lanier,  Sidney,  21,  22,  63,  86,  271, 

274-280,   293,   296,   300,   305,   349. 
Lathrop,  Rose  H.,  221. 
Lazarus,    Emma,    322,    336-338. 
Learned,  Walter,  335. 
Leaves  of  Grass,   163,   172. 
Led  Horse  Claim,  The,  221. 
Leland,   C.  G.,  21. 
Lewis,  Charles  B.,  26,  32. 
Life,   43,    335. 

Life  on  the  Mississippi,  58. 
Lincoln,  A.,  26,  27,  89,  142. 
Lincoln,    Life    of,    by    Nicolay    and 

Hay,  88. 

Literary   World,   The,   296,   318. 
Little   Corporal,   The,   95. 
Little   Lord   Fauntleroy,    388. 
Little   Women,  220. 
Locke,    David    Ross,    26,    32,    37-40, 

44. 

London,  Jack,  410. 
Longfellow,    Henry    W.,    8,    10,    11, 

12,   18,   19,  52,  66,   118,   126,  127, 

142,   153,  181,  186,  217,  277,  417. 
Longstreet,  Augustus  B.,  28,  84,  297, 

300. 

Lorna   Doone,   402. 
Looking   Backward,   409. 
Lowell,   James   Russell,    11,    12,    14, 

19,  20,  22,  25,  120,  121,  124,  138, 

139,   142,  153,  163,  167,  186,  228, 

230,  433. 
Luck    of    Roaring    Camp,    The,    21, 

65,  73,  355,  357. 
Ludlow,  Fitzhugh,  51. 
Lummis,  Charles  F.,  106. 


Lyceum,  The,  8,  10. 

Mabie,   Hamilton  W.,  433. 

M'Carthy,   Justin,  64. 

McConnel,  J.  L.,  84. 

MacDonald,   George,   387. 

Macon,  J.  A.,  266. 

Madame  Delphine,  252. 

Mahan,   Capt.,  416. 

Main-Traveled     Roads,     355,      374, 

431. 

Major   Jones's    Chronicles,    298. 
Malbone,  63. 
Major,    Charles,   403. 
Mark  Twain,  see  Clemens,  S.  L. 
Matthews,    J.    Brander,    333,    353, 

372,   433. 

"Marjorie  Daw,"  21,  360. 
"Mars   Chan,"   265,   307. 
Maupassant,     197,    235,    238,    244, 

373 

Maynard,  M.  T.,  185. 
Meadow    Grass,    240. 
Melville,  Herman,  163. 
Menken,  Adah  Isaacs,  51. 
Mercier   College,   299. 
Merwin,  C.  H.,  66,  75,  82. 
Methodism,  96. 
Mifflin,  Lloyd,   345. 
Millet,  13. 
Miller,  Joaquin,   15,   18,  21,  22,  51, 

61,   99-115. 

Miller,  Olive  Thorne,  160. 
Mims,  Edwin,  293. 
Minister's    Charge,    The,    206,    208, 

209. 

Minister's  Wooing,  The,  228. 
Mitchell,   Donald  G.,  63,  417. 
Mitchell,    S.    Weir,    321,    345,    403, 

404,  405-407,  412. 
Modern  Instance,  A.,  206,  209. 
Monsieur  Beaucaire,  262,  403. 
"Monsieur  Motte,"  221,  362. 
More,    Paul    Elmer,    432,    434-436, 

437. 

Morris,  G.  P.,  12. 
Motley,  J.  L.,  11. 
Moulton,  Louise  Chandler,  220, 

336. 

"M.  Quad,"  see  C.  B.  Lewis. 
Mr.    Isaacs,    389. 

Mrs.   Partington's   Carpet   Bag,    33. 
Muir,    John,    21,    61,    99,    108,    111, 

113,    154-159,    161,    165,    182. 


446 


INDEX 


Mulfonl.    Prentice,  51. 
Munkittrick,    R     K.,   335. 
Murfnv.  Murv    .\,.ailles,   15,  18,  21, 
24,    221,    278,    307,    308-310,    319. 
Murray,  W.  H.  H.,  100. 
My  Study  Windows,   138. 
My  Summer  in  a  Garden,  21,  419. 

"Nasby,   Petroleum   V.,"  see  D.   R. 

Locke. 

Nast,  Thomas,  26,  40-41,  43,  44. 
Nation,    The,    433. 
N.u.ll,    Hobert  Henry,   26,  32,   51. 

na\i.  The,  21,  342. 
NY\v    Kii-land,   6,   7,    14,   63,   234. 
New  England   Nun,  A,  237,   355. 
New    England    School,    220. 
New  Hampshire,  6. 
Neic   York  Ledger,  205. 
Nicholson,  Meredith,  410. 
Norris,  Frank,  396,  398-400,  412. 
Norris,  VV.  E.,  87. 
North  American  Review,  7,  25,  32, 

124,   138,  201,  244,  355,  433. 
Norton,  C.  E.,   11,   12,   18,  65. 
Novel,    What  It  Is,  The,  392. 
Nye,  Bill,  see  E.  W    Nye. 
Nye,    Edgar    Wilson,    26,    32,    325, 

352. 

O'Brien,  Fitz-James,  357. 

O'Connor,  VV.  D.,   175,   185,  372. 

Oglethorpe  University,  275. 

Old  Cheater  Tales,  394. 

Old  Creole  Days,  21,  86,  247,  294, 

355. 

Oldtown  Folks,   63,   229. 
One   Summer,    220,    408. 
O'Reilly,  John  Boyle,  21,  321,  345. 
Our  Old  Home,  13. 
Outlook,  The,  433. 
Outing,   160. 

Our  \ational  Parks,  158. 
Outre-Mer,    12,   52,   203,   417. 
Overland    Monthly,    55,    65,    67,    68, 

69,  73,  84,   104,   155. 

Page,  Thomas  Nelson,  15,  1!>.  14, 
79,  83,  245,  265-269,  270,  291, 
307,  321,  372. 

Paine,  A.  B  ,  44,  62 

Parker,  Theodore,    11. 

Parkman,  Francis,   11,  259,  416. 


Parsons,  T.  W.,  11,  19,  163,  350. 

Passionate  Pilgrim,  A.,  21. 

Pater,    Walter,    197. 

"Paul,  John,"  see  C.   H.    Webb. 

Paulding,  J.  K.,  25. 

Pearl    of    Orr's    Island,    The,    229, 

231. 

IVrk,   Samuel  Minturn,  335. 
Pembroke,  239. 
Pencillings    by    the    Way,    12,    52, 

417. 

Pcinberton,  T.  Edgar,  71,  82. 
"Perkins,   Eli,"   see   M.   D.   Landon. 
Perry,  Nora,  88,  220. 
Perry,    Bliss,    165,    185,    403,    410, 

433. 

Phelps,  Elizabeth  Stuart,  see  Ward. 
Phillips,  David  Graham,  410. 
Phillips,   Wendell,  8,   11. 
"Phoenix,  John,"  see  G.  H.  Derby. 
Phoemxiana,  28,   84. 
Piatt,  J.  J.,   18,  200,  322,  323,  352. 
Piatt,  Sarah  M.,  352. 
Pike  County,  30,  46,  72,  83-98,  113, 

115,   178. 

Pike  County  Ballads,  21,  85,  321. 
Pit,  The,  399. 
"Plain     Language     from     Truthful 

James,"  67,  84,  321. 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  11,  118,  356,  357, 

379. 

Poems  of  the  Orient,   127. 
Poems  of  Tico  Friends,  200,  323. 
Pond,  Major,  40. 
Prescott,    W     H.,    11. 
Preston,  Margaret  J.,  272,  292. 
Price,  Thomas  R.,  275 
Prince,  Oliver  H.,  298. 
Puck,   43,    333. 
Punch,  43. 

Ramona,    254. 

Read,  Opie,  26. 

Read,  Thomas  Buchanan,   118.   120, 

299. 

Reade,   Charles,   64.   224. 
Realism,     17,    178,    184,     191,    208. 

244,  298,  396,  401. 
Red  Badge  of  Courage,  The,  397. 
Red  Rock,  2(17. 
Reid,   Whitt-law,   253. 
Reign  of  Lau;  The,  369,  370. 
Repplier,   Agnes.   428-432,   437. 
Rice,   Alice   Hegan,   410. 


INDEX 


447 


Richard  Carvel,  403. 
Richardson,  Charles  F.,  9,  434. 
Richardson,  Samuel,  212,  213,  215, 

429. 

Rickett,  A.,   185. 
Riggs,  Kate   Douglas   Wiggin,   220, 

335. 
Riley,    James     Whitcomb,     18,    22, 

86,    307,    324-328,    352. 
Rives,    Ame"lie,    318. 
Rise    of    Silas    Lapham,    The,    206, 

209. 

Robertson,  T.  W.,  44. 
Robinson,    Rowland    E.,    231,    379, 

383. 

Roche,  James  J.,   335. 
Roderick  Hudson,   192. 
Rodman   the   Keeper,   294,    317. 
Roe,  E.  P.,  323,  386,  387-389,  410. 
Romance  of  Bollard,   261. 
Romanticism,    18,    245,    402. 
Ross,   Clinton,   372. 
Rossetti,  D.  G.,  21. 
Rossetti,   W.   M.,   105,   111. 
Roughing  It,   56,  58. 
Round  Table,  The,  271. 
Rudder   Grange,   21,   359. 
Russell,  Irwin,   18,  21,  83,  85,  265, 

279,   288-290,    293,    305,    322. 
Ryan,  Abram  J.,  345. 

St.    Elmo,    225,    228,    264,   268. 

St.   Nicholas,   95,    358. 

Sam  Lawson's  Fireside  Stories,  86. 

Saracinesca,  390. 

Saturday  Club,  11. 

Saxe,  John  G.,  25,  335. 

Save  Hohm  Stories,  21 .  220,  254. 

Science  and  Health,   170. 

Science  of  English  Verse,  284. 

Scollard,    Clinton,    322,    335,    347. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  207. 

Scribner's    Monthly,    9,    19,    20,    21, 

64,   114,  155,  265,  342,  358,  380 
Scudder,   Horace  E.,   135,  264,  433. 
Service,  Robert  W.,  86. 
Shaw,    Henry   Wheeler,    16,    18,   26, 

27,  31,  41-42,  44,  56. 
Shelburne  Essays,   434,   435. 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  119. 
Sheppard,  Elizabeth,  224. 
Sherman,    Frank    Dempster,    345. 
Shillaber,   P.    B.,   25,   33. 
Short  Sixes,  334,  379. 


Short  Story,  The,  79,  355-382. 
Sill,    E.    R,    89,    322,    342,    343-345, 

354. 

Simms,  W.  G.,  263. 
Singular  Life,  A,  223. 
Sketch-Book,  The,   12,  417. 
Slosson,    Anne   Trumbull,   220,   231. 
Smith,  Charles  Henry,  26,  32,  298. 
Smith,    Francis   Hopkinson,    15,    18, 

209,  373,  409,  415. 
Smith,   F.   S.,  44. 
Smith,  Seba,  25. 
Smith,    Sol,    84. 
Smyth,  A.  H.,  135. 
Songs     of     the     Sierras,     21,     105, 

321. 

Songs  of  the  Southern  Seas,  21. 
South,   The  Old,  262. 
Southern   literature,  294. 
Southern   Magazine,    The,   299. 
Spofford,     Harriet,     Prescott,     220, 

222,  225-228,  230,  235,  335. 
Springfield  Republican,   386. 
Stedman,  Edmund  C.,  9,  10,  16,  18, 

22,  31,  32,  66,  89,   119,   120,   121, 

122-126,   133,  153,  160,  175,  343 
Stedman,  Laura,   136,  437. 
Stevenson,  R.  L  .  10,   138,  240,  403. 
Stimson,   Frederic   J.,   409,   415. 
Stockton,    Frank    R,     18,    21,    23, 

24,  358-361,  372,  382. 
Stoddard,  C    W  ,  10,  13,  16,  51,  66, 

67,  89,  103,  106,  117,  118,  345. 
Stoddard.  R.  H,  117,  118,  119.  120, 

121,   126,   128,   135,   140,  152. 
Stone,  Melville  E  ,  330. 
Story,  W.  W.,   120,   163,  299. 
Story  of  a  Bad  Boy,   63. 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,   11,   12.  62, 

63,   186,   221,  222,   228,   229,  233. 
Stowe.,  Charles  E,  242. 
Sumner,  Charles,  11,  44. 
Sut  Lovengood's  Yarns,  84. 
Swedenborg,   8,    186,    198. 
Sweet,   Alexander   E.,   26,   32. 
Swinburne,    A.    C.,    21. 
Symonds,   J.   Addington,   21,    185. 


Tabb,   John   B  ,   276,   322,   343. 
Taine,  H,  92 

Tarkington,  Booth,  403,  410 
Taylor,    Bayard,   8.    10,    12,    16,    19, 
31,   32,   52,   63,   66,   84,    116,    117, 


448 


INDEX 


118,  119,  120,  121,  126,  J40,  142. 

L5i     217 

Taylor,  Mario  Hanson,  135. 
Temple,   Charlotte,  8. 
Terhunr.    Mary   V.,  269. 
Tensas,    Madison,    84. 
Thackeray,   W.  M.,  04. 
"Thanet,  Octave,"  see  Alice  French. 
That    Lass    o'    Loicrie'a,    21,    221, 

388. 
Thaxter,    Celia,    18,    21,    220,    321, 

338-340,   353. 

Their  Wedding  Journey,  21,  204. 
Thomas,    Edith   M.,   221,   322,   341- 

342,  353. 

Thompson,    Donman,   326. 
Thompson,     Muuruv,     10,    21,     159- 

100,  324,  401r  403,  418,  433. 
Thompson,   Slason,    :>.">:{. 
Thompson,  William  T.,  298. 
Thoroau,  Henry  D.,  11,  21.  99,  137, 

144,    14.'),    147,    149.   150,   151,   155, 

157,   158.   101,   103,   105,   171,   178, 

181,    182,  321. 
Ticknor,  Caroline,  98. 
Tii-knor,  Francis  O.,  272,  298. 
Ticknor,    George,    11. 
Tiger-Lilies,    277. 
Timothy    Titcomb    Letters,    387. 
Timrod,  Henry,  272,  292. 
To   //ate   and   to   Hold,   403. 
Token,  The,  8.  244. 
Tolstoy,   13,  83,   11)5,  210,  244,  373, 

409.* 

Tory    Lover,    The,    234. 
Torrey,  Bradford,  100,  101,  433. 
Tourgee,    Albion    W,    21,    2!>4,    317. 
Tourjjon  irtl,  s;;,    l(.i5. 
Townsend,   Edward   \V.,  380. 
Transcendentalists,    ISO. 
Traubel,  Horace,   165,   185. 
Tribune  Primer,  The,  329. 
Triggs,  O.  L.,   185. 
Trollope,  A.,  64. 
Trollope,  Mrs.  T.  A..  64. 
Trowbridge,   J.  T,  63. 
Turner,  J.  A.,  302. 

Uncle  Remus,  II is  Songs  and  Say 
ings,  304 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  67,  228,  250, 
257,  386. 

University  of  California,  398. 

University  of  Missouri,  329. 


University     of     Pennsylvania,    405, 

418. 
University  of  Virginia,  265. 

Van   Dyke,   Henry,  342,  433. 
Venetian  Life,   13,  203. 
Venner,  Elsie,   63,  228. 
Vers  de  Kociett,  334,  335. 
Views  Afoot,   12,  203. 


Wallace,  Lew,  21,  253-254,  321,  388. 
Walden,    137. 

Wake-Robin,    21.    144,    148. 
"Ward,  Artomus,"  see  C.  F.  Browne. 
Ward,  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps,  t»3, 

65,   220,  221,   236,  321,   335    372. 
Ward,   William   Hayes.  293. 
Warner,    Charles    Dudley,    18,    21, 

100,    418-420,   429,    437. 
Webb,   Charles   Henry,   26,   32,   51, 

67. 

Wobster,    Daniel,    11. 
Week    on    the   Concord   and   Merri- 

mac  Rivers,  137. 
Wells,   Carolyn.  335. 
Wendell,    Barrett,    11,    434. 
Wesleyan   Female  College,  298. 
\\liarton,   Edith,   410. 
When  Knighthood    Was  in  Floicer, 

403. 

Whipple,   E.    P.,   163. 
Whitcomb's  Chronological  Outlines, 

63. 

White,   Greenough,   9. 
White,    Stewart    E.,   410. 
Whitman,  Mrs  ,  88. 
Whitman,    Walt,     18,    21,    22,    99, 

139,    142,    147,    152,    103-185,  217. 
Whittier,  John  G,   11,   12,   19,   186. 
Wih-ox,  Ella  Wheeler,  338. 
Wiggin,  Kate  Douglas,  see  Riggs. 
\\ilkins,  Mary  E,  see  Freeman. 
Williams   College,    329,    387. 
Willis,    N.    P.,    8,    12,    52,    66,    118, 

126,  417- 

Wilson,  Augusta  J    Evans,  225. 
Wilson,    Robert    B,    322,    346-347. 

354. 

Wilson,   Woodrow,   262,  418. 
\\int.-r,    William,    123. 
Wister,    Owen,    410. 
\\Oman1  s   Reason,   A.,    12,   306. 
Women  in  literature,  335. 


INDEX  449 

Woodberry,    George    E.,    322,    342,      Wordsworth,  William,  22. 

343,  433. 
Woolson,    Constance    Fenimore,    21,       Yale    University,    122,    343. 

24,    221,    258,    296,    317-318,    319, 

321,   335.  Zola,    212,    397. 

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